The story is founded on fact. In a village on the south coast of England, young Margaret Catchpole is being courted by two rivals, Will Laud, a smuggler, and Lieutenant Barry of the coast guards. She favours Laud, and when he escapes from custody after a government raid on the smugglers, Margaret...
Peter Vernon's mother dies and he is adopted by a squatter, Kingston, whose son, Philip, is Peter's age. The two grow up and fall in love with the same girl, Marie.
The Blue Mountains Mystery involves the alleged murder of a wealthy businessman, Henry Tracey, and the eventual discovery that the victim was an underworld look-alike impersonator.
Bill is a Woolloomooloo larrikin who vows to abandon his life of gambling and drinking after a spell in gaol following a raid on a two-up game. He falls in love with Doreen, who works in a pickle factory, but faces competition from a more sophisticated rival.
The Woman Suffers is a complicated silent melodrama of revenge and sexual betrayal, only part of which survives. In the first two reels, which have been lost, a woman caught in an abusive marriage runs away with her infant son from her drunken husband. He falls on a knife and dies and she collapses...
When Bill, a worker at Woolloomooloo Wharf, breaks his leg, his wife, Nell has to go to work. She's successful, saving her daughter money, but she gets sick and dies after the operation, promising to raise Peggy the lady.
Bill Lawson (Eddie O'Reilly), a wharf labourer, loses his job and decides to go out bush to find work to support his wife Elsa (Stella Southern) and daughter Betty. He befriends a well-born Englishman, Kenneth Hillyard (Rawdon Blandford) after rescuing him from two thugs and the two decide to go...
An adventuress, Cora Williams is in love with Howard Wilson, even though he is happily married to Mabel, and they have small children. Cora gets a man called Curtis to pretend to be in love with Mabel and engineers a situation where Howard walks in on them and gets the wrong impression.
Two transported convicts, George Worrall and Frederick Fisher, are released and take up farms at Campbelltown. They are both successful and become friends. Worrall persuades Fisher to go on a trip to England and says he will manage Fisher's farm.