To Africa for a Rose

Three generations of women
pioneering in the Wind of Change

by Emma Ellis

This forthcoming non-fiction book, To Africa for a Rose, explores a century of world change across five continents through the experiences of three women: wife, daughter and granddaughter to Australian agricultural and photographic safari pioneer, Frank Anderson.

‘The Wind of Change is blowing through this continent,’
declared British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan in his 1960 speech
that would mark the reshaping of Africa, even the world. ‘We must all accept it as a fact.’

Seeking a fresh start in 1925 after narrowly surviving World War One’s Gallipoli campaign and a shattering earthquake, Frank Anderson travelled to East Africa where he discovered an old Chinese rosebush flowering improbably in a remote wilderness. On this slender evidence of agricultural potential, he asked his wife, Honor, and their seven-year-old daughter, Patricia, to leave Western Australia and join him in establishing a farm named Rasharasha in wild bush. The family’s new home was located in the isolated Maasai highlands of Tanganyika Territory (Tanzania) between Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti. It was miles from medical help, the only ‘neighbours’ the nomadic, warring Maasai people and the plentiful wild animals that graced the plains at that time.

Drawing on a rare and previously unseen archive of family documents spanning more than a century and five continents (Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and North America), this book offers unique insights into precarious colonial life, It forms a family’s tale of survival and transformation during the British Empire’s closing century. Meanwhile, hidden forces in the West conspired to seal the fate of their endeavours - along with a legacy that still shapes our world today.

To Africa for a Rose is pending publication:
enquiries can be sent via the Contact page.

Three Generations of Women

To Africa for a Rose is told in three parts that focus in turn on Frank Anderson’s wife, daughter and granddaughter, all united by their love for Frank and for their farm, Rasharasha.

Honor showed resourceful courage as she ventured into the unknown, ultimately finding the key to the family’s survival… Patricia held the complex venture together in the wilds of Africa… Jeannine picked up the pieces as the dust of the Wind of Change settled.

Honor: Honoria Ethel Anderson, née Hassell, 1893 - 1980

Patricia: Ethel Patricia Wright, née Anderson, 1918 - 2011

Jeannine: Monica Jeannine Cook, née Wright, 1944 -

Dramatic events unfolding in To Africa for a Rose take place roughly from the 1870s to the 1970s.

Blending family story with wider historical events, the book first evokes early colonial life in Albany, (Western Australia) and moves to Gallipoli (Turkey) and Yokohama (Japan).

Then it moves to such East African locations as the safari town of Arusha, as well as the Serengeti Plains, Ngorongoro Crater and Mount Kilimanjaro. The main focus is Rasharasha, an isolated sloping valley near Arusha, Tanganyika (now Tanzania).  The name, Rasharasha, means ‘light rain’ in Swahili, and in the Andersons’ time, ‘land of mists’. The story ultimately moves to Europe and the USA.

Much of the book is set in the context associated with East Africa’s personalities such as resident Denys Finch-Hatton (immortalised in Out of Africa) and visitor Ernest Hemingway (Green Hills of Africa, Snows of Kilimanjaro).

Frank Anderson and his family are revealed as people who faced survival through courage, new perspectives and transformation. Threaded through the story are those vital, yet often unacknowledged, roles often especially played by women who support others’ hopes and dreams.

This account of a way of life now long past reveals surprising facts about a period of history that not only still resonates but also defines the lives we live today.

Shown in the photograph is a rose similar to the one on which Frank Anderson risked his family’s future in 1925. Of ancient Chinese origins and known as ‘Old Blush’, it was fragrant and elegant, yet tenacious. 

For the Anderson family, this rose symbolised how to grow, adapt and survive, even in radically changed circumstances.

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