A Fortunate Life

Impoverished eight-year-old Bert Facey is forced to live the backbreaking, dawn-to-dusk life of a farm labourer after his father dies.

With a deceased father and a mother who abandoned him, Bert decides to go to work for the Phillips, a childless couple who treat him like family.

Now twenty, Bert is reunited with his mother twelve years after she abandoned him; he moves north to seek more work.

After becoming a champion prizefighter, World War I breaks out and Bert decides to enlist; he later survives the nightmare of Gallipoli.