I remember Richard Waterhouse as my lecturer in American colonial history at Sydney University in 1978. Then in his late twenties, he stood at the lectern as if itching to break free, arms flailing, feet shifting, constantly pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose; every lecture had its moment of vaudeville. After daily suffering the monotone perorations of those who stood entombed in their academic gowns, I enjoyed his lectures, which seemed driven by an infectious curiosity about the past. Perhaps it was also the material that captured the students’ imagination. American history, laced as it was with any number of grand and naïve utopias, could be read as epic and tragic drama, a constant fall from grace.

The Vision Splendid: A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia begins by way of the American example. Unlike the religious idealism that marked the foundation of Puritan New England after 1630, and the more entrepreneurial models of Virginia, South Carolina or England’s Caribbean colonies, ‘Botany Bay was intended to be structured and hierarchical’. At the same time, it was still very much part of the British government’s broader plans to create a colonial trading network. From the beginning, dreams of a successful rural industry – pastoralism, agrarianism, the yeoman farmer – formed part of the colony’s raison d’être.