In 1783, Thomas Kendall, a naive nineteen-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself in Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land So begins this story which is as much that of the city of Sydney as it is a family chronicle. With her uncanny ability to bring history to life in Technicolor, Judy Nunn traces the fortunes of Thomas Kendall's descendents through the booms and the crashes, two devastating wars and several social revolutions up to the present, vividly drawing the events, the ideas and issues that have made have made Sydney siders what they are today.