I love tea Cooper novels! I love learning my Australian colonial history through them. I have a great sense of what it was like to come over as a free settler, to see modern Australia being built. I loved Mary, she was a wonderful protagonist. I thought Tea Cooper has done a great job in depicting the challenges on arriving as a free settler in Sydney, the heat the stink, the general chaotic-ness! I’ve never thought about Francis Greenway, but I have now, nor really ever had a sense of how incredible such a blank slate would have been (wrongly obviously it always was Aboriginal land) in which a convict could just with skill and talent leave a real legacy… Just loved it
