They Sought the Last of Lands

William Skyvington presents the outcome of research into his paternal ancestors. His grandfather went out to Australia at the start of the 20th century, and married an outback girl whose English father had reached NSW in the second half of the 19th century. This book might have been a run-of-the-mill family-history monograph written by the Australian-born grandson of typical Old World pioneers in the Antipodes. However, during the final stages of the writing process, the author had got into the habit of displaying his work in progress on a dedicated Internet website... and that changed everything. The author started to hear from individuals-indeed, relatives-whom he had never known. And two such cousins provided the author with astounding last-minute revelations, forcing him to rethink and rewrite large sections of his typescript. Skeletons-some quite harmless, others more disturbing-started to jump out of closets on both sides of the author's paternal ancestors. What had started out as a banal exercise in genealogy was metamorphosed, in parts, into psychological case studies of relatively recent ancestors who apparently believed that a good way of presenting one's family history was to invent it. The author speaks here of real individuals, whereas they themselves could be satisfied with myths.