Children of Australia's founding convicts grow up in a unique environment. On the one hand, convicts labour in chains under lash-wielding redcoats while on the other, immigrant farmers strive to carve out a living, reluctant convicts their only available labour. Adam seeks his father knowing only that he 'went bush' to live with Aborigines. Kept from him was that his father, a convict bolter, was killed by redcoats in a frontier skirmish. The sorry hand of fate most-times visits only hardship on a developing community yet occasionally some pawns in the game of life find Lady Luc lends a hand. The odds, for Adam, fall a little each way.