By the 1700s, the Aborigine people have lived in harmony with the land in Australia for sixty thousand years. But now, ghost-ships are arriving, their very existence is threatened by a terrifying white invasion.When Jonathan Cadwallader leaves Cornwall to sail on the Endeavour, he leaves behind his sweetheart, Susan Penhalligan . . . That is, until an act of brutality reunites them in the raw and unforgiving penal colony of New South Wales.Billy Penhalligan has survived transportation and clings to the promise of a new beginning. But there will be more suffering before he or his fellow convicts can regard Australia as home . . . .A sweeping tale of discovery, love and hardship in the sixteenth century which will bring emergent Australia and all its inhabitants - new and old - to life.