AustLit

Kate Dunstan, indulged as a child, is left a rich orphan by her parents' death. Needing money to marry her poor lover she forges her guardian aunt's signature, is arrested and sentenced to Van Diemen's Land. She describes the horrors of the voyage including a bloody mutiny by the male convicts caused by illness, bad provisions and cruelty. On arrival the convicts were all tried and the ringleaders hung, partly on the evidence of a friend of Kate's. This friend was abducted from the house where she and Kate were assigned, and murdered by convicts for revenge. Kate eventually sets up a school and marries but her past follows her - she and her husband leave Tasmania for Melbourne and then Adelaide where after a short happiness and the birth of a son she is again discovered and her husband dies. The tale ends with her return to England. (PB)