In a storm off the Victorian coast in 1892, a young English girl is shipwrecked and orphaned. She is rescued heroically by the only other survivor of the wreck, who is feted and rewarded in Melbourne. The girl is taken in care by her guardian who has made a meager fortune from gold, and settled at Echuca — the great Australian inland port on the River Murray. His ward is sixteen years old, and her name is Philadelphia Gordon. She is known as Delie.
Delie is an energetic and high-spirited girl who wants to paint, and not conform. She finds it difficult to understand why her aunt Hester, a tart and unsmiling woman, seeks to impose her ideas of womanhood, femininity, even good housekeeping on a girl who needs nothing more than the freedom to lead her own life. It is her cousin, Adam, who truly awakens in Delie the feelings of young womanhood.
