This account takes the reader from the time Aboriginal people could walk across Bass Strait through to the present day. We learn about the coming of the overlanders with their flocks, some of the biggest gold rushes the world has seen, the boom of the 1880s and the bank crashes that followed. Blainey describes Melbourne's time as the federal capital, and with an extraordinary eye for detail traces Victoria's recovery from drought, depression and bushfire, and considers its transformation from a rural to a cosmpolitan urban society. He speculates on the differences between Sydney and Melbourne, and describes the transformation of a once-puritanical state to today's world of casinos and gambling. He concludes this history with an account of the state's fall from grace, the collapse of the Cain government, the turbulent Kennett years and the rise of the Bracks government.