In two years' time, Vol. 1 (of 2)

The first-person narrator Kitty describes life on a rural Australian station, balancing household routines with farm business anxieties as the family awaits news of wool sales that could fund a return to England. Through domestic scenes, recollected legal disputes that prompted emigration, and episodes aboard the mail steamer, the narrative traces family bonds, social ambitions, and encounters with English relations and local society. Themes include the contrast between colonial hardship and genteel aspirations, the strains of economic uncertainty, and the narrator's coming of age amid changing fortunes and social expectations.