This book follows the author's settler-ancestors and their migration to Australia. Some sailed to penal settlements, farms, or small coastal townships.

Some came from Ireland, escaping Catholic persecution, famine, and rebellion. Others came from Scotland, where capitalist farming was emerging, from England, where political reform was slowly advancing, and from Germany, where resistance to power was strong.

In 1788, Australia was Aboriginal land, but by 1815, European settlers began moving into the interior, with the Aboriginal population eventually yielding to colonial rule. By 1860, the author's ancestors had settled in the northwest of New South Wales, as publicans and sheep farmers on the Liverpool Plains, where early drinking houses and dray-men camps began to form the foundation of future villages.