This work of fiction is a story of mining in the newly discovered gold fields of New South Wales in the early 1850s told from the point of view of the miners. It observes the transition of Australia’s primary economic activity from pastoralism to commerce and some of the first glimmerings of coordinated industrial action on the goldfields of Australia. It tells the tale of a group of assorted diggers of alluvial gold on the goldfields near Bathurst. The leader is Australian-born George Barton a younger son of a squatter and an experienced bushman, who throws off his class background to become a digger. Some of his mates are of genteel but murky background from England, women from the slums of London and a Cornishman with mining experience. After conflicts with government authorities, some of the miners succeed, most fail, and the book ends with the dispersal of the group following the exhaustion of the easily extractable gold in the area.