Warm thanks to Peter Bishop, Catherine Blyth, Karen Colston, Beverley Cousins, Chris Kunz, Sara Maitland, Kathy Mossop and Lyn Tranter for their many helpful suggestions, and to the staff at RHA. I am especially grateful to Maggie Hamand and Kirsten Tranter for their perceptive comments about the structure of the manuscript. Part of the book was written while I was on a Varuna Long-lines Fellowship, awarded by the Eleanor Dark Foundation.

Background reading came from the book by Mark McKenna (2002), Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place, Sydney: UNSW Press, as well as from the Australian War Memorial research website for the history of Australian pilots’ involvement in the Second World War.