The novel The Nineties is the first part of the famous trilogy, which also includes the novels Golden Miles (1948) and Winged Seeds (1950). The trilogy covers sixty years of Australian history, dating back to the nineties of the eighteenth century. The same heroes act in it; the writer traces their fate and relations with unflagging attention.

The nineties is the time of the gold rush in Australia, when crowds of people from all over the world rushed to the north-west of the country in the hope of getting rich. Did they succeed? In her novel, the writer directly and unequivocally answers this question.

Gold! The life of the human community depends on him. Everyone dreams of fabulous wealth. When the rumor of a new find reaches a village of prospectors, then everyone starts to move. People rush on a campaign for gold. Heavily loaded camels, carts, gigs, carts drawn by old nags, wagons, donkeys, people on bicycles, on horseback, walking with handcars — all rush uncontrollably to search for treasures. According to such laws, the Southern Cross village also lives, where the summer is dry and long, where there is not enough food and water.

Before us is the life of several families, poor and modest, typical representatives of working Australia. Such is the family of Sally and Morris Gaug, in which, of course, the main role is played by Sally. Common sense, perseverance, courage, spiritual purity - these are the main traits of her character, helping to survive in the conditions of the difficult struggle for existence, which dooms her life. She is still a girl and marries Morris Gaug, an unsophisticated offspring of an English aristocratic family, who is sent to Australia for correction with a small amount of money. The farmer did not work out of him - he does not get along with the workers, does not know how to manage the farm, then invests money in the mine, but loses it along with the work. Having become a prospector during the gold rush, Morris wants to return to England as a millionaire and restore the wealth of his family. In the end, he ends up being an undertaker. Sally is the daughter and granddaughter of Australian pioneers, and this idea helps her in difficult moments of life. She does not feel like a stranger in the vast and mysterious open spaces of Western Australia. After all, this is all the same Australia, she tells herself, although everything is different here than in the southern forests where she grew up.

In the village of Southern Cross, then in Kalgoorlie, Sally opens a dining room, and then a boarding house for prospectors. She is assisted by prospector workers, among whom the principle of partnership is unshakable. Therefore, they sharply condemn Morris, who in one of his unsuccessful campaigns for gold left Sally sick with the natives. Those saved her life. However, all the same, prospectors believe that people are smeared with tar and dumped in feathers for lesser sins than such an attitude towards his wife. Sally, however, does not allow anyone to scold Morris and remains loyal to him, despite all the offers of Frisco de Morfe, an old Morris companion who constantly gets rich and buys miners' pits and mines during periods of stagnation. To frisk, borrow, or steal is the same thing for Frisco. Frisco buys Maritan, a simple-minded Aboriginal girl, from her father and future husband for several bottles of wine and two packs of tobacco. But she does not want to recognize her as her child. Maritana and her mother Kalgoorla are heroines representing the theme of the Aboriginal people in the novel, very close to the writer. There are villains, she notes, who abduct the natives, rape them, and other whites have to pay for someone else's fault - the natives take revenge on any white. So there is a theme of enmity between whites and natives. It has already been announced on the first pages of the novel, which tells how Kalgoorl, who has just given birth to a girl, is forced by two whites to take them to where the water is.

To match Frisco and Paddy Kevan - a ragged boy who does not disdain the resale of stolen gold. At the end of the novel, he is already the owner of a profitable mine. Such people will become the country's largest gold producers in the future.

The tragic line of the novel is connected with the family of Laura and Olf Brierley. Laura is a beautiful woman who is hardly adapted to the hardships of harsh life, who would rather be a decoration of society. At first, happiness seems to be smiling at this family - Olf sells his gold mine profitably, acquires his own house and even makes his way to the mine managers, because he always had a thirst for knowledge and was persistently engaged in self-education. A vision of a calm, secure life looms before him like a mirage. Old age and poverty scare him. And Olf decides to become a reliable person for the owners: he does not allow himself to take part in the struggle of miners for their original rights. At first, this struggle was purely economic in nature: prospectors asserted their right to search for placer gold anywhere no closer than fifty feet from the gold mine. Sites with gold vein, requiring high costs and machinery, should be allocated to the development of industrial companies. The rights of prospectors to alluvial gold are the basis of the welfare of the state, as ore gold mined by industrial companies flows to Perth, the main city of the state, or overseas, enriching foreign shareholders.

Overseas owners of gold mining enterprises are not so much interested in gold mining as in the stock exchange game. They profit from the issuance of shares of lime-bearing gold plots almost more than the shares of the richest mines. Gold mining becomes a means of fraud, robbing gullible people, and the mines themselves, the author writes, like “dark horses”, the true virtues of which the owner of the race stables keeps secret,

The long and difficult struggle of the miners gradually takes on a political character, when at crowded meetings and demonstrations the demands are made of self-government, the allocation of mines in an independent state, its inclusion in the federation of Australian states. In the history of Australia, these moods and performances of the broad masses in the last decade of the last century took effect, and in 1901 six Australian states, before that being an English colony, received dominion rights.

Olf Brierly on the issue of prospectors' rights to placer gold takes the side of entrepreneurs. He no longer meets old friends and is bitterly convinced that they have turned his back on him. Even his bosom friend Dinnie Quinn, with whom he once set off in search of gold. These days, only Morris Gaug helps Olf, protecting Olfa in front of the miners. True, Paddy Kevan shows sympathy for Olf. But Paddy, as always, pursues his interest. Olf tidies up papers related to reporting at the Paddy mine, but does not want to participate in his thieves' frauds with gold. Therefore, he soon loses the last job in his life. To find another, without a diploma, Olf, being just a practitioner in his field, cannot. Specialists with a diploma come from America and Germany to Australia. It is they that are valued. Olf realizes that he made a mistake by not supporting the prospectors in their struggle for their rights, and comes to speak frankly with Dinny Cain about this. Olf soon commits suicide. In a farewell letter to his wife, he begs to forgive him - he has no other way to provide her and her daughter, and the money that she will receive under the insurance policy will be enough for the first time. Old comrades decide to bury Olf at their own expense and raise some money for his loved ones.

The third family, which has many pages in the novel, is Jean and Marie Robillard. Healthy and young, the Frenchman Jean Robillard came to Australia from England, where he was a teacher. He dreams of saving money and buying a plot of land and livestock. But the laborer’s earnings are not enough, and he joins the first group of prospectors, rushing for the South Cross for gold. Marie goes with him.

Jean did not find gold and for some time worked at the mine. Then he entered the hotel as a cook. Soon the Robiyyars move to Kalgoorlie, and Olf promises to arrange Jean at his mine. But he had already begun to cough. Together with their father, they build a hut for Marie near the Brown Hill mine. Jean continues to work underground, but he is choked by a cough: after all, miners work with Kyle and drill by the light of a lantern in the faces where there is dust. People are suffocating in smoke from blasting. Thousands of miners die from consumption, and poor fastenings lead to accidents during frequent landslides. But people are cheaper than fixing wood. Everyone understands that the days of Jean are numbered.

In the last episode of the novel, we see Sally, Morris and Dinnie on the veranda of their shared home. This conversation sums up all the vicissitudes of life during the gold rush - the old era of gold mining at these mines has ended, Morris notes. A new one begins: now industry will be enlarged and everything will be subordinated to its interests. But scams and speculation should stop, says Dinnie, you need to fight for their rights if people do not want to be robbed. They won the fight for alluvial gold because they showed their strength and cohesion. A new stage of struggle is coming. On this optimistic note, the first part of the trilogy ends.