Today, roughly 100,000 Gypsies call Australia home, yet their experiences have never been included in any official histories of our country.

Here, award-winning memoirist and novelist Mandy Sayer weaves together a wide-ranging history of Gypsies in Australia that begins with the roots of the Romani culture, tracing the first Gypsy people to arrive in Australia (including James Squire, the colony's first brewer) through to the Gypsy families currently living in Australia, who share the stories of their ancestors and their lives.

With her unconventional, nomadic early life, Mandy Sayer has a unique insight into the lives of the people she meets, and a strong sense of the importance of their history. Given their blessing to tell their stories, Sayer also demolishes some longstanding but baseless myths along the way.