Under Capricorn (novel)

The story is set in Sydney in the then colony of New South Wales in the 1830s, at the time when many of the convicts had completed their sentences and were becoming prosperous citizens in a new country.

The streets, the sounds, the smells, the convict gangs, the English officials and their wives, the rum traders, speculators and adventurers are realistically described.

Along the way he falls in love with the daughter of a retired prison hangman, a "currency lass," i.e. one of the first whites born in the colony.

"It Is known that many Australians are descended from alliances of free men and convict women, and vice versa, and no one is ashamed of it, for a new and sturdy race was created.

But Miss Simpson gives us the extreme, the runaway marriage of an English lady with a groom convicted of manslaughter, and that of the son of a Lord with an ex-hangman's daughter."