Newly arrived in Australia, Jason Firbeck sees his position as leader of the family being steadily undermined.

The first episode of this epic story, "A Sort of Gentlemen," opens when the Firbeck family disembark in 1829 into a strange world of red-coated soldiery, yellow-jacketed convicts, a tanned peasantry and an elite decked out as colourfully as the myriad parrots on display in thriving Sydney town.