'Do we count you in?' When Joe is reluctantly dragged into a deadly plot by rebellious convicts at the Castle Hill prison farm on the outskirts of Sydney Town, he quickly realises it does not pay to be their enemy. He has been quietly working out his sentence as a shepherd boy, in the company of his friends, Pat and Kitt - who has set her eye on Joshua Holt, son of the heroic General of Wicklow. But the croppies are hard, tough patriots of Ireland and desperate to revolt and Joe finds himself amidst a desperate bid for freedom in the first convict uprising against the colony of New South Wales.