This account of an Australian childhood in the outback, and subsequently in Sydney, encompasses family tragedy, a devastating struggle with the desert environment, and an evocation of the Australian landscape. Jill Ker Conway grew up in the 1940s and '50s in Coorain, an isolated 32,000-acre ranch built by her parents on the vast western plains of New South Wales. When her brothers were sent away to boarding school, she became her father's station-hand, helping to herd sheep and check fences, until five years of severe drought laid waste the flourishing Coorain acres and destroyed her parents' dreams. Moving to Sydney, she was forced to comply with the rules and restrictions of city life and with her mother's increasing depression. The author describes her long and painful road to independence, her growing cultural and political awareness at university, and the friendships, travels and studies which brought her to a new understanding of herself and her place in the world.