The Foundling

THE FOUNDLING. Abandoned as a baby, taunted as a child, Julia Stephen - the Foundling of the title - learns to survive in the West Country of England until her adoptive Methodist family sets sail for South Australia in the earliest years of European settlement, in search of a better life.

Necessity takes them north, to work for the South Australian Mining Association of the Burra Burra, whose regime rates the workforce far below the appeal of profi ts. When Julia settles in the Company township called Kooringa, her past returns to haunt her.

Who is the mysterious packman from Julia's Devon childhood who follows her through the streets of Kooringa township? What is the grim secret she uncovers in the dank squalor of a dugout in the Burra Burra Creek?

FORTUNE'S FOOL. Ballarat in the goldrush of the early 1850s. A place of glittering promise and deep despair; where hidden resentments will swell into open rebellion against the colonial government in December 1854.

Into this male-dominated sex-starved shantytown comes Miss Julia Stephen, seeking her Cornish lover. Quick-witted, resourceful - and unscrupulous - she becomes one of the most successful women on the Victorian diggings. When tensions erupt into bloody rebellion at Eureka, Julia Stephen's life is transformed beyond her wildest dreams.