The story of a nation: on the 1st day of the 20th century, the Commonwealth of Australia came into being. Drawing on sources as diverse as Alfred Deakin's notebooks, Nettie Palmer's letters and the diary of a bank clerk named George M'Clure, Souter describes the birth of such Commonwealth institutions and symbols as parliament, the high court, the army and navy, the flag, income tax, the coat of arms and Canberra. There are lively narrative portraits of the young Commonwealth's great public figures: Barton, Reid, O'Malley, Griffith, Isaacs, Fisher, Hughes, Mannix and Monash - as well as Tom Thick, a telegram boy in western Victoria; Ida Dawson, a governess at a homestead near Collarenebri; Shaw Neilson, a Wimmera bush worker and poet; and Snowy Howe, a young pearler who went from Broome to Gallipoli.There is a wide panorama from the South African Veldt to the Somme fro the first Empire Day in 1905 to the slaughter of Gallipoli, from leisurely Edwardian cruises 'home' to Ross Smith's extraordinary London-Melbourne flight in 1919. This is the initiation of Australia.