Seventeen-year-old Liza is happy working as a lady's maid - until her employers decide to emigrate and her father makes up his mind that she is to wed an older widower whom she detests. Determined to avoid a loveless marriage, Liza plans to run away, and when the widower rapes her in order to force her to marry him, she flees back to the family for whom she worked, and they all set out on the long voyage to Australia. On board ship Liza realises she has fallen pregnant, and that even if she can survive the journey, the demanding life of a settler in 1850s Western Australia will be made even harder by an illegitimate child.

But Liza is to find that in addition to deprivation of the worst sort, Australia will offer her opportunities she could never have dreamt of back home in Lancashire.