Cirrus@Austlit

'Bob Waterer of Sydney’s northern beaches, and now in his 80s, rediscovered his Aboriginal descent in 2004 after examining the birth, death and marriage certificates of his parents. As has happened so many times in southern Australia, he and his sister Joan had lived their lives under the sometimes unspoken stricture, as Waterer puts it, that ‘it was not wise to investigate our heritage too far back as there might be Aboriginal ancestors’ (p.5). Further consultation revealed the family’s connection to an Aboriginal woman well known on the Hawkesbury River in the nineteenth century, Biddy Lewis. Biddy was the daughter (or possibly the granddaughter) of Matora, first wife of the famous Bungaree, friend of Macquarie.' (Introduction)