This 1982 adaptation is part of the studio's World Masterpiece Theater franchise, based on the 1982 novel Southern Rainbow by Australian writer Phyllis Piddington.

Set in the 1830s,[1][2] the series tells the story of a young girl named Lucy and the hardships and excitement she and her family encounter when they move from England to Adelaide in South Australia to start a farm.

Not only it is the first anime in the World Masterpiece Theater to have been broadcast while the author of the source material was still alive (followed by Story of the Alps: My Annette, The Bush Baby and Kon'nichiwa Anne: Before Green Gables), but it also is the only one to have aired when the original work wasn't finished yet.

At the time of the broadcasting in Japan in 1982, Southern Rainbow was still in phase of serialization on an Australian family daily magazine, prior to be published as a book later that same year.

[3] Another adaptation of the story, written by Ken Wakasaki as a tie-in to the anime, was also published in Japan in 1982.