Bert Facey doesn't have an easy start in life. Born in 1894, he is two years old when his father dies of typhoid fever trying his luck on the western Australian gold fields. Then Bert's mother abandons him and his brothers and sisters to the care of his grandmother. At this time, Australia is deep in an economic recession, which makes the difficult life of pioneering the Australian bush even harder. Bert, his grandmother and his siblings travel hundreds of miles from Melbourne to join an uncle and his family in their rough hut on the Kalgoorlie goldfields. But the gold is almost depleted, so they move to a Government land grant to carve out a farm from virgin bush, miles from any settlement. Despite this, there are too many mouths to feed, so at eight, Bert goes to work on the farm of a family of drunken horse thieves. Forced to work from dusk to dawn, he never sees the wages and clothing he is promised. When he is whipped almost to death at the age of ten, Bert escapes back to the care of his grandmother and uncle.

At last, fortune seems to smile on young Bert. He goes to work for the Phillips, a childless couple who treat him as one of the family. It's hard work—clearing and burning off the bush, putting up fences, ploughing the soil, planting crops, looking after the domestic animals. But Bert doesn't mind, because "I wanted to please and stay with these people." The Phillips decide to adopt Bert, but his mother won't give them permission. This refusal changes the attitude of the Phillips towards him and so, bitterly disappointed, Bert decides to leave. At the age of 13, never having spent a day at school, Bert goes to work for another couple, the Bibbys. Then, at Bert's 14th birthday, he receives an invitation from the mother he hasn't seen for twelve years, asking him to visit her in Perth.

Bert's relationship with his mother is both sweet and sour, but mostly sour. He has been toughened by years of hard work which has made him almost totally self-reliant. He feels his mother has little to offer him, so he decides to travel to the north of western Australia to look for work on the cattle stations there. Bert joins a cattle drive on a six-month trip. It's hard, sometimes monotonous work, until a fierce thunderstorm panics the huge herd of cattle in the middle of the night. In the turmoil of the chase, Bert gets separated from the herd and his companions, and is lost in the wild bush. For seven days he follows the course of a river, with little to eat, until an Aboriginal tribe rescue him and return him to his companions. With the princely sum of 50 sovereigns in his pocket from the cattle drive, Bert goes back to work: as a farm manager, building dams and fences, as a railway labourer and track layer, and as a survey linesman. During this time he develops a keen interest in boxing.

At nineteen, powerfully built from his years of manual labour, Bert joins Mickey Finn's Boxing Troupe as a prize fighter. Touring Australia as a heavyweight, he never loses a bout. When World War I breaks out, Bert rushes to enlist. He serves in Gallipoli, where Australian and allied troops suffer thousands of casualties in their attempt to wrest control of the peninsula from the Turks. Bert takes part in bayonet charges and hand-to-hand combat in trenches, and sees his companions dying around him. His own brother Roy is killed by a shell, and Bert helps to bury him. Then an exploding shell crushes one of his legs and causes internal injuries. Bert is sent back to Perth to recuperate. While there, Bert meets a young woman, Evelyn Gibson. After a short courtship, they marry, and Bert settles down to a life of relative peace and contentment like he never knew in the struggles and hardships of his early life.