In 1788, Thomas Kendall, a naïve 19-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself bound for Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross. Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last more than 200 years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only at the dawn of the new millennium - as an old journal lays bare a terrible secret - that the family can finally reclaim its honour.... 

In 1881, ‘Big Jim’ Durham, an English soldier of fortune and profiteer, ruthlessly creates for Elianne Desmarais, his young French wife, the finest of the great sugar mills of the Southern Queensland cane fields, and names it in her honour. The massive estate becomes a self-sufficient fortress, a cane-consuming monster and home to hundreds of workers, but ‘Elianne’ and its masters, the Durham Family, have dark and distant secrets; secrets that surface in the wildest and most inflammatory of times, the 1960s.

Kalgoorlie. It grew out of the red dust of the desert over the world's richest vein of gold. People were drawn there from all over the world, to start afresh or to seek their fortunes. People like Giovanni Gianni, fleeing his part in a family tragedy. Or Maudie Gaskill, one of the first women to arrive at the goldfields and now owner of the most popular pub in town. Or Caterina Panuzzi, banished to the other side of the world to protect her family's honour. The burgeoning town could reward you or it could destroy you, but it would never let you go.

Territory is the story of Henrietta Southern, a young Englishwoman who trades her war-torn homeland for a place of wild tropical storms and searing heat, crocodile-infested rivers and barren red wilderness. Six months after the bombing of Darwin, she joins her new husband, Spitfire pilot Terence Galloway, for a new life on his Northern Territory cattle station. It is also the story of their sons. Of Malcolm and Kit, two brothers who grow up in the harsh but beautiful environment and share a baptism of fire as young men in the jungles of Vietnam. 

In a time when desperate people were seizing with both hands the chance for freedom, refugees from more than 70 nations gathered beneath the Southern Cross to forge a new national identity. They came from all over war-torn Europe to the mountains of Australia to help realise one man's dream: the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. People of all races and creeds tunnelled through a mountain range to turn the course of a majestic river, trying to put to rest ghosts from the inferno of history: buried memories, unimaginable pain and deadly secrets. 

Master storyteller Judy Nunn has now sold over one million books worldwide. In her spellbinding new best seller, she takes us on a breathtaking journey deep into the red heart of Australia. It is 2001, and as the world charges into the new millennium, a century-old dream is about to be realised in the Red Centre of Australia: the completion of the mighty Ghan railway, a long-lived vision to create the 'backbone of the continent', a line that will finally link Adelaide with the Top End.

On a blistering hot day in 1850, George and Richard Ross take their first steps on Australian soil after three long months at sea. All they have is each other and a quarterly remittance from their irate father who has banished them to the Colonies. A decade on, and the brothers are the owners of successful vineyard, Araluen, nestled in a beautiful green valley not far from Adelaide. Now a successful businessman, George has laid down the roots of his own Ross dynasty, born of the New World.

In the second half of the 19th century, Melbourne is a veritable boom town, as hopefuls from every corner of the globe flock to the gold fields of Victoria. And where people crave gold, they also crave entertainment. Enter stage right: brothers Will and Max Worthing and their wives, Mabel and Gertie. The family arrives from England in the 1880s with little else but the masterful talents that will see them rise from simple travelling performers to sophisticated entrepreneurs.

Alex Rainford has it all. He's sexy, charismatic and adored by fans the world over. But he is not all he seems. What spectre from the past is driving him ever closer to evil? And who will fall under his spell along the way? Madeleine Frances, beautiful stage and screen actress. Years before she escaped Alex's fatal charm, but now she is forced to confront him once again...and reveal her devastating secret. Susannah Wright, the finest classical actress of her generation. Not even her awesome talent can save her from Alex's dangerous charisma.

Each of the four who travel this journey has a story to tell. An environmentalist fights to save the primitive and beautiful Pilbara coast from the careless ravaging of mining conglomerates; a Vietnam War veteran rises above crippling injuries to discover a talent that gains him an international reputation; and an ambitious geologist joins forces with a hard-core businessman to lead the way in the growth of Perth from a sleepy town to a glittering citadel.

Edwina Dawling is the golden girl of Australian television. The former pop singer is now the country's most popular actress, an international star thanks to the hit TV soap The Glitter Game. But behind the seductive glamour of television is a cutthroat world where careers are made or destroyed with a word in the right ear...or a night in the right bed. Where success breeds envy and corruption, concealed in the flashing smiles at every premier event, every party.

Van Diemen's Land was an island of stark contrasts; a harsh penal colony, an English idyll for its landed gentry, and an island so rich in natural resources it was a profiteer's paradise. Its capital Hobart Town had its contrasts too; the wealthy elite in their sandstone mansions, the exploited poor in the notorious slum known as Wapping, and the criminals and villains who haunted the dockside taverns and brothels of Sullivan's Cove.

During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided ... without its people's knowledge. A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men - a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956.

Deep in the heart of Australia's high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly's children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection - but it can be harder when Joe's around. 

Vera De Rossi no longer believes in love...and thanks to her ex-boyfriend­, she's also broke, jobless, and staring down the barrel of a court case that could land her in prison. Turning to her talent for baking, Vera opens a cafe in Hanrahan, a cozy tourist town in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. Josh Cody, once Hanrahan's golden boy, escaped 16 years ago with gossip hard on his heels and a pregnant girlfriend in tow. Now he's back: a qualified veterinarian - and a single dad with a lot to prove