‘He was probably from Essex originally,’ the researcher suggested. ‘Essex is full of Wisemans. English Wisemans,’ he emphasised. ‘The name comes from wyse mann.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very thorough. Much appreciated.’

I hung up and sat on the bed. I was disappointed. Why? Part of my image of Wiseman, and of myself, had always been coloured by the possibility of Jewishness. Now something was having to shift. Why was I resisting it?

We did the readings, we did the interviews, we had our photographs taken for the paper. The Centenary of Federation was properly celebrated. Then it was all over. One by one the writers and musicians and dancers trundled their suitcases out of the hotel and headed home.

Melissa and I had breakfast together on the last morning.

‘So what have you found out about your ancestor?’ she asked.

Not much, was one kind of answer. I’d seen the street where he lived, stood on the spot where he was caught stealing. But I still didn’t know who he was—what kind of person he might have been. I didn’t know whether he stole out of hunger or greed, whether he married for love or money.

Everything, was another kind of answer. What I knew now was simple but important: how inadequate the story about him was. Over the last two weeks he’d burst right out of the membrane of that family tale. I knew him now as a human being, complicated and contradictory. He’d stood and walked and talked, been cold and wet, warm and dry, hungry and full. I couldn’t see him, didn’t know him, but that didn’t matter: what I knew was that he was real. Much more real than Solomon Wiseman was born in London and worked on the docks.

A real man had sailed up the Hawkesbury and picked out a hundred acres for himself. A real man had taken up, or taken, a piece of someone else’s place. Not just a story. Something that had really happened.

I was finding it hard to put into words, but I gave Melissa some kind of answer.

She nodded. ‘So did he turn out to be Jewish in the end?’

‘Ah well,’ I said, and explained. ‘I’m a bit disappointed,’ I added, and heard myself laugh. ‘Don’t know why.’

‘Well,’ Melissa said. ‘If he was Jewish, that would make him just that much less white.’

As the jumbo heeled in the sky over London, pointing towards home, I rested my forehead against the window and stared down. There was the Thames, drawing its wandering line. There were the hazy spires and roofs, the streets and parks. Wiseman had known them, and I knew them too now.

What I’d discovered here wasn’t so much my roots, but the feeling of having roots to discover. It had taken this foreign place—London—to show me the power of belonging. Here, as never before, I could think: this is where my family was from.

But I knew I hadn’t finished with my great-great-great grandfather. I’d felt him in Christ Church Spitalfields and I’d felt him in Brunswick Court, Bermondsey. Now I needed to feel him in the place that was home. I had to make the connection: his life, my life, and the place where they came together.