It was on of the greatest human experiments ever undertaken: to populate an unknown land with the criminal, the unloved and the unwanted of English society. Amid conditions of brutality that paralleled those of slavery, 'The First Fleet' was sent to a place no European but the legendary Captain Cook had ever seen. Left to live or die on the hostile Austrlian continent, these convicts - and their equally isolated guards - occupy the centre of Colleen McCullough's compelling new epic. Richard Morgan - convicted felon and educated, intelligent, resourceful man - finds the will to survive, experience the joys of love, and finally make an indelible mark upon the new frontier. -- insde jacket.