In 1803 the convict escapee William Buckley, an Englishman and former British soldier, abandoned the life he knew and without contact with Europeans lived for many years among the indigenous peoples of what was eventually to become the colony of Victoria.

In doing so he showed not only his survival skills but also an extraordinary ability to understand and adapt to a culture in which he was the alien and the intruder. How and with whom he lived between 1803 and 1835 has not been explored, and colonisation soon destroyed the way of life of those Buckley had lived among, leaving him and his achievements generally ignored and also open to ridicule.

This book will change that view. As Murrangoork, Buckley deeply believed in the reincarnation myth he was embodying, and he may have thought of himself as Kondak, a Wathaurong elder - an astonishing claim by the first long-term European resident of Victoria, who went on to become that colony's first and greatest racial conciliator.