AustLit

'An Australian pioneering story set in the lush, newly settled Western District of the Colony of Victoria. The year is 1844: the Webster family - John Webster, carpenter; Belinda, his prim, lady-like sister, and his motherless children, Henrietta, Andrew, William and baby Edward - arrive by bullock cart at the wattle and daub hut in the Vale of the Wannon which is their first home in Australia.

'Twelve-year-old Henrietta, high-spirited and resourceful, and her three brothers soon find themselves in a host of new experiences and adventures, mostly precipitated by the ruthlessness of Benjamin Jones, manager of the sheep station where John Webster has taken up employment. It is Jones' implacable enmity towards the Aborigines that brings Mundowie, the wounded Aboriginal girl, to the shelter of the Websters' home.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (1974 Hodder and Stoughton edition).