Between 1788 and 1845 Australia developed from a small settlement whose habitations were a few wattle-and-daub huts to a country set on the road to nationhood with richly endowed buildings many of them of great beauty, all interesting. Drawings not photographs illustrate the architects work here, to more exactly honour the actual design. Plans, sections, details and technical data are included also both to give scope to their architectural ideas and to illuminate buildings no longer extant. Morton Herman explains that in some instances the documents consulted have almost always been 'charmingly' vague about present or past locations of buildings 'Not infrequently one is instructed to turn across the paddocks at the third tree past Mr Moyne's farm'; Mr Moyne, his farm and paddocks long since gone. Characters, idiosyncracies, triumphs and setbacks are sympathetically woven into the story of the Early Australian Architects along with background ideas and conditions of the age that gave birth to this colonial architecture.