What's On

Louisa Anne Meredith, writer, botanist and painter, arrives in Sydney in October 1839 at the age of 27 to start a new life in her husband’s country. She is writing her latest book “Notes and Sketches of New South Wales,” and is eager to interview as many of the locals as possible to ‘capture the essence of Australia.’ She is invited to a welcome party hosted by the fictional Coy family, at their grand villa in Elizabeth Bay; “Evergreen House.” Here she discovers a series of troubling revelations including the cruelty of a multi-tiered society, the bitter class struggle between convicts and free settlers, the greed of the land-owning classes and most alarmingly of all: the exploitation of convict servants.

In a chance encounter with the escaped convict Wallace Hopkins she is asked to publish stolen documents which will expose a scandal that plagues the colony: the prolonged exploitation of convict labour through false allegations and incitement to crime made by greedy landowners. Will Louisa help expose this scandal? Will the servants of Evergreen House ever gain their freedom? Are Bunyips real? What is ‘the essence of Australia?’