A work of fiction based on historical events. John Gavin, a 15-year-old boy, became the first European to be executed in the colony of Western Australia. He had arrived in Fremantle just months earlier, one of a group of juvenile convicts taking part in an attempted rehabilitation scheme. John Schoales, the government guardian of the new arrivals, put Gavin to work on an isolated farm south of Perth. Soon after, he was brought back to Fremantle in shackles, charged with murder.