A young Englishman departs for Australia with the conviction that he can remake himself and improve the colony he arrives to. Ernest Neuchamp carries the earnest idealism of the reformer into a land that resists his schemes at every turn. He leaves behind the comfortable certainties of his ancestral home, crossing an ocean to find Sydney disappointingly English, the colonists indifferent to his visions of progress, and his noble ambitions colliding repeatedly with stubborn reality. The first volume traces his arrival and early encounters with colonists who challenge his assumptions about what kind of new world this actually is. Written in 1890 by an Australian colonial author who knew precisely how much reformer's zeal could accomplish and how much it could not, this novel functions as both adventure story and quiet reckoning with the mythology of self-reinvention. For readers who enjoy Victorian novels about the gap between intention and outcome.
