I definitely enjoyed this more than the first volume (I picked up both cheap). History mixed with humour covering Australian history from the 1820‘s to the 1880‘s; a tale of the horrors of a penal colony, the indiscriminate slaughter of the native population, finding gold, racial discrimination, incompetent explorers and bush rangers, feeling like a cavalcade of horrors. Given the subject matter some times the humour works, other times less so .