A digger on the Jim Crow goldfield recalls his childhood in Tasmania and his father's fiercely loyal gipsy who cared for him and his motherless sister. Her devotion to their dead mother led her to mother the children, and one night she saved them from a bushrangers' attack, running with them to safety and killing two bushrangers with a hatchet. Strong portrait of a fierce, 'true' woman convict and bushranging times in convict Tasmania. (PB)