In the short space of seventy years, the world of the Aboriginal tribes of the Sydney region - unchanged since the Dreamtime - became a living nightmare. The land which had been theirs alone for so long was suddenly and irretrievably lost to the fair-skinned newcomers of the First Fleet. The Aborigines were in no way prepared for the cataclysm which engulfed them as settlement spread and they found themselves dispossessed not only materially, but spiritually. When The Sky Fell Down traces the dynamic years of the colony's growth between 1788 and 1860. It is not merely the story of the white man's exploits - rather, it is the story of the effect of those exploits and achievements on the country's original inhabitants. Illustrated.