Obadiah and Elizabeth ‘flabbergasted frightfully’ when they heard their three children, Daniel, Walter and Sarah, were considering leaving England and joining the goldrush to the Antipodes - the Australian Goldfields. The children expected to find gold and to make ‘their everlasting fortune.’ Their parents could only see the terrible dangers involved in what they considered ‘a foolhardy adventure.’  Obadiah and Elizabeth concluded a warning letter they wrote to Walter, Daniel and Sarah with this desperate plea: PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT GO TO THE GOLDFIELDS.  This is an entertaining look at life on the goldfields in the 1850s from the journey from ‘Home’ to the Antipodes; the scenes of drunkneness and brawling that greeted the shocked Britishers;  the intriguing crimes of interfering with your own clock, severing a clothesline, kite flying and why they were deemed to be criminal; the women of the goldfields and what life was like for children and school students. For teenage readers and upwards. Illustrated  by Carson Ellis.