It's 1829, Jason Firbeck, a retired naval Leiutenant, recently widowed arrives with his family - Samuel, his elder son, Luke, his second son and Jassy his daughter - in NSW, where land granted by influential friends, supposedly awaits him. The family disembark into a strange world - red-coated soldiers, yellow-jacketed convicts, tanned peasants, and sprawling thriving Sydney town spread fanwise into a sundrenched hinterland.