Rush

- Season 1

(1974)

Lay preacher George Williams and Richard Lucas are vainly trying to muster support for miners' rights when news comes of the discovery of a large gold nugget.

Sgt. McKellar cautions three notorious troublemakers, Watson, O'Toole and Jones, who hire an Aboriginal worker, Wongerra, to guide them to the new gold find at Ben-Ga-Dee Creek in return for a few bottles of spirits.

Hard working miner Mick Draper has done well at the diggings, and plans to form a partnership with his friend Jim Hill.

English prize fighter Gentleman Jim Dawson comes to the goldfields with two friends, Symons and Green, supposedly to pan for gold.

Gold Commissioner Fitzalan unwittingly instigates another disturbance on the Crockers Gully goldfields when he appoints Dr. Kirby as a temporary teacher.

Peter Shaw-Jones, an asthmatic young son of English landed gentry, comes to Crockers Gully to seek his fortune.

When Brendan O'Hara is wrongly accused of failure to hold a miner's licence, Fitzalan refuses to believe the story.

When a fever epidemic sweeps Crockers Gully, young Jessie Smith's father dies, and Sarah takes the girl to see the Reverend Mr. Fisher.

Peggy O'Shea, the Irish lark, arrives at Crockers Gully to prepare for her tour of the gold fields. Other new arrivals are a Chinese family who are befriended by Sarah Lucas.

Jones and Brady have been chained to a tree while awaiting trial, but they break free and go bush. They take over a tent belonging to a couple of prospectors, killing one and injuring the other, while planning their next big robbery.

A badly wounded Aboriginal girl, Werowey, is brought to Dr. Woods. Sarah offers to care for her, and Williams is sympathetic and worried for Werowey, but Lansdowne and Fitzalan consider all Aboriginals are savages.

Sarah Lucas' anxious father, the wealthy industrialist Hindmarsh, arrives at Crockers Gully to persuade her to return to England with him - the two had been somewhat estranged as he had not approves of Sarah's late husband.