My Story: Australia

“Sydney Cove is grey and scrubby. It looks out into the harbour and across the hills on the other side. Many of the convicts’ huts have been built on rocks. They are so ramshackle, their foundations must cling like limpets.”

In 1790, Elizabeth Harvey is flung into London’s Newgate Prison for a crime she didn’t commit. Then she finds herself transported to Australia on a convict ship, facing the harsh reality of eking out a life within the stark new continent. As maidservant to a surgeon in Sydney Cove, she has the chance to create a new future – one better, at least, than imprisonment in England. Yet first she must deal with many hardships, threats and dangers, not least from the real criminals who have been sent there too…