A social history of early Australia, focusing on the men and women who settled in this colony in New South Wales. It is also an account of changing ideas as one generation succeeded another and as Camden was bound to Sydney by an increasingly complex web of traffic and communications.

Camden's place in Australia's history is a singular one. For most Australians it is bound up with the Macarthurs, owners of Camden Park and the pre-eminent family in early colonial New South Wales. The Macarthurs are central to this study of Camden, but even more important are the labourers and trades-people who came to live at Camden after the village was laid out in 1841. This historical guide focuses on men and women, their images of themselves, their religious faith, their relationship with the land, with each other, with their landlords and with nearby Sydney. It is an account of changing ideas as one generation succeeded another and as Camden was bound to Sydney by an increasingly complex web of traffic and communications.