A groundbreaking history of the colony of Sydney in its early years, from the sparkling harbour to the Cumberland Plain, from convicts to the city's political elite, from the impact of its geology to its economy.
Grace Karskens teaches Australian History at the University of New South Wales. Her groundbreaking book The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney won the 1998 NSW Premier's Award for Local and Regional History and established the author as a leading historian of colonial Australia. As Project Historian for the world-renowned Cumberland-Gloucester Streets Archaeological Project (1994-1999) she combined history and archaeology to explore the lost world of the Rocks neighbourhoods in her book Inside the Rocks. She has also written local histories and is a regular contributor to journals on topics ranging from convicts to museums to grave-robbers.