The best stories of life in the penal colony of New South Wales were told in its Supreme Court. The court was the theatre where dramatic happenings were related - piracy at sea, Aboriginal spears meeting British guns, escaped convicts, gun battles with bushrangers, teenage girls seduced by their neighbours. The most compelling of these stories, between 1824 and 1836, are retold in this book. The author deals in particular with the law's outsiders, including those who had limited legal capacity: wives, convicts and Aborigines.