It's the 60's.
A 15 year-old boy from North Yorkshire has emigrated to Australia on the Big Brother Program. He has left an abusive situation with family, teachers, etc. Believing that he would have a better life and learn a trade.
Unbeknownst to him, he has jumped from the proverbial "frying pan into the fire." After leaving the Training Farm, he is sent to his first job in the Bush. Treated like a slave, hard work, he does have the first opportunity to shear a sheep! As difficult as it was, he decides then and there, to become a "Gun Shearer." A gun shearer he never becomes, but a shearer fast and clean enough to make a living in any shed.
He, still a boy, lives, works, and travels with men who, because of his attitude towards hard work, is given respect. He meets wonderful characters that Dickens himself would have enjoyed meeting.
Hard working, hard drinking, foul-mouthed men of the world of shearing. His Yorkshire accent (which he works very hard at getting rid of) is a constant source of ridicule. Finally, he sounds like almost any other Aussie!