Our brave New World.

Byline: DAVID JONES

Meet the Stephensons - the intrepid family who are to re-enact the perilous lives of the first colonial settlers down under for an ambitious new reality TV show. Will they thrive? Or will the indigenous dangers - or their convict helpers - overwhelm them?

The Stephenson family are about to leave for Australia and, when I arrive at their handsome threestorey detached house in the Yorkshire countryside, which they built themselves to enviably professional standards, they are busy making last-minute preparations. John, the father, is trying to make a mosquito net without string or mesh, while his partner, Liz, is thinking up tasty recipes for freshly skinned wombat, snake and kangaroo roasted over a brushwood fire.

Meanwhile, their daughter, Carina, 16, has abandoned the internet chat rooms to surf for information about the lethal funnel-web spider and other poisonous creepy-crawlies that might threaten the family's safety out in the bush.

And her brother, Tyler, 12, has pitched his tent in the garage to get used to sleeping outdoors.

Given the Stephensons' resourcefulness, they will surely be ready for anything Australia can throw at them by the time they leave the UK, on August 25. But John is a tad concerned that Liz, who is as trim and beautiful as she was when they met on a kibbutz in 1985, might fall for one of the muscled young 'convicts' who will be assigned to work for them. 'She's very bossy, so she scares men who think a woman belongs at the kitchen sink,' he says. 'But if she gets friendly with one of those 18-year-old Aussie lads - well, you never know what might happen, do you?' By now, you might have guessed this will be no ordinary voyage down under. No packagedeal jaunt filled with surfboarding, koala bear cuddling, shrimps on the barbie and chilled glasses of Barossa Valley chardonnay. For the Stephensons are not only trekking 12,000 miles from Doncaster to New South Wales, they are travelling 200 years back in time, to an age when the first 'free settlers' sailed from Britain to colonise a newly discovered land, first named New Holland, then Australia.

In a unique televised experiment, John, 41, the maintenance man at Cantley Hall, a 400-acre estate in Doncaster, and Liz, 37, a special needs teaching assistant, and their children, will join two other families (from Ireland and Tasmania) to recreate the experiences, in precise historical detail, of those doughty pioneers for a series to be called The Colony, which will be screened on the History Channel early next year.

Families living in The Colony must abide by rigorous rules. These will be set down by the governor - in reality an Australian historian - and will change as time progresses, as they did then. For example, they may be ordered to change their farming methods, or pay 'taxes' of wheat to the local government. As free settlers, the Stephensons will be given 100 acres of land, plus basic provisions and tools, including a tent to live in while they build a cabin. Because of their criminal connections, their Irish and Australian neighbours will receive less land. The three families must manage for 16 weeks and, according to the producer, there is just one aim: 'survival with grace'.

The Stephensons won the chance to portray the family of fortune-seeking migrants leaving Yorkshire in 1800 after spotting a newspaper advertisement headed 'Up For a Challenge In Oz?'. On meeting them, it is obvious why the Australian production team chose them from some 2,000 applicants. They are spirited, unflappable, self-reliant and work as a team - one look at their DIY house tells you that.

We could have so easily gone for an arrogant, upperclass English family to fulfil the stereotype,' says series producer Chris Hilton. 'But they would never have stuck it out. In the end, we went for a down-to-earth Yorkshire family. The Stephensons are very likeable, and viewers don't want to watch people they don't like.

The daughter is very strong and determined, the mother always burns the dinner, and the family always laugh. They are brilliant.' After spending an engaging evening with the Stephensons and their big, soft bull mastiff, Neo, I wholly agree. Why, though, would anyone in their right mind volunteer to spend four dangerous, dirty, lonely, undernourished months re-enacting the experiences of the first free settlers? The Colony may be categorised as an historical form of reality TV, yet there are no prizes for winning and, to survive the full 16 weeks, its participants will need considerably more guts and resourcefulness than the cossetted showbiz types who 'endured' two weeks in an ersatz Australian jungle on I'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!

The adventure begins with a flight to Coffs Harbour, a scenic old port, about 340 miles north of Sydney, that resembles Circular Quay - now the hub of Sydney Harbour - where the early immigrants landed. Here, the Stephensons will meet their fellow settlers, the Hurleys from Dublin and the Hohnke family from Tasmania, and be given new identities. Intriguingly, John and Liz will portray a couple who are, in many ways, a 19th-century version of themselves - adventurous, aspirational Yorkshire folk, out to improve their lot by their own endeavours.

Today, they have become relatively affluent by improving or rebuilding a succession of houses, then selling them at a handsome profit. They now live in a [pounds sterling]400,000 home with no mortgage. In class-ridden 1800, however, their only way of joining the landed gentry would have been to take advantage of the new, getrichquick scheme offered by the Whig government.

Keen to colonise the vast new island discovered by Captain Cook in 1770 - and populated only by nomadic aboriginal natives and a few thousand convicted criminals shipped from England as punishment - they offered sizeable chunks of land to anyone brave, or foolish enough, to risk sailing away to a new life in the South Seas. The Stephensons were prepared to give it a try as simple farmers.

To add an edge to the proceedings, their fellow settlers have been given markedly different backgrounds. Teacher Maurice Hurley plays a newly released Irish political prisoner, who has served a seven-year sentence handed down by the English, and decides to remain in the New World. His wife, Patricia, 45, and their children - twins Susan and Declan, 18, Deirdre, 14, and Kate, ten - have joined him.

Kerry Hohnke, 42, and his wife, Tracy, 37, are flower-growers in real life and have four children, aged from five to 18. In the series, they will play the part of the first 'true-born' Australians: descendants of convicts who arrived from England a generation earlier. Historically, these two families would have harboured a deep loathing towards the new arrivals from Yorkshire.

And, given that Mrs Hohnke believes the early settlers ruined Australian culture by turning it into a mini-England, complete with mock-Georgian houses and materialistic values, there is every chance that this simmering resentment will surface in The Colony.

The immigrants will be searched and any anachronistic gadgetry, such as mobiles, confiscated. Musical instruments and games in keeping with the period, such as cards, are permitted (Declan Hurley is hastily learning to play the fiddle). The settlers can write to relatives and friends, but since mail took nine months to reach England, the Stephensons will arrive home long before their letters.

Next they will be issued with their clothes. The men will dress in simple cotton shirts and loosefitting hose to suit the stifling, 90-degree Australian summer; the women will find comfort more elusive. Modesty being a prerequisite of the day, even for female travellers, they must swelter under woollen bonnets, ankle-length dresses and tightly buttoned tunics.

They will not be allowed any makeup, perfume, shampoo, deodorant, sun-cream or insect repellant. The only 'luxury' items handed out by Britain's colonial governors in the standard 'settler's pack' were unscented soap and a mirror (ironically, the Stephensons do not have one hanging in their Doncaster house). 'It's a good job we're not manicured, get-your-hairdoneevery-week types,' says Carina, a plain-speaking tomboy who wears combat trousers. 'But I'm a bit put out at having to wear a dress.

I don't even own one.' Once attired, the families will board a tall ship and simulate the sea passage to Australia. In reality, this was a hazardous, yearlong voyage during which lives were frequently claimed by the dreaded three S's: scurvy, scarlet fever and syphillis. For the sake of convenience, the journey will be condensed into three or four days.

When the ship anchors they will be rowed ashore to their new country: a strange and frightening land of plunging valleys and rugged sandstone cliffs, parched brown by the remorseless sun. If they see something stir in the bushes, it might be a goanna, a fearsome 6ft lizard. Or perhaps a venomous red-bellied black snake slithering through the dirt. These creatures, and dozens more like them, will be eager to plunder the settlers' meagre provisions. The settlers will receive salt beef and tinned pork, vinegar, spices, rough wine, fishing hooks, a saw and vegetable seeds. They will also keep farm animals, but first they will have to catch them and construct wooden pens.

Each family will be allocated three convicts - two men and a woman - to help them with their chores. These servants must work from dawn until dusk, with just two breaks: half-anhour for breakfast and 45 minutes for lunch.

Slackers can be punished in any way their masters see fit (though flogging is forbidden).

As Chris Hilton says, 'It will be fascinating to see how they react in the early days. It's up to them to decide what to do. They might enclose the animals first, or build a house. They might compete with one another or co-operate. It is really man versus nature; their experiences will be driven by their need to survive. And, of course, there will be some unexpected hurdles to keep them on their toes.' If any family can last the distance, it is the Stephensons, for they have precisely the right pedigree to see them through. Neither John nor Liz are particularly academic, and both are small in stature, but they are physically and mentally strong, and were raised to a life of practicality. John left school in Doncaster at 16 to become an apprentice engineer. He now does all the maintenance on the estate of the Georgian mansion, Cantley Hall, where he works, and can tackle almost any task. Although Liz looks very feminine, with blonde hair and blue eyes, she is also an ace handywoman with what John laughingly calls 'a fetish for wood'. Both her parents did manual jobs, and at school in Middleton, near Manchester, she was thrown out of the French class and made to do metalwork.

She has since completed a joinery course.

The youngsters are chips off the old block - Tyler has just built a superb den in the woods and Carina helped her mother to tile their roof.

They will need all their skills to construct a log cabin, even though an old bushman will be on hand to help them to master such arts as chopping and scaling a stringy-bark tree. For Liz, however, there are more pressing worries.

'My main concern is the children's safety,' she says. 'There are going to be dangers and you've got to protect them properly.' Filling their stomachs presents another problem. Both John and Liz are animal lovers and the prospect of slitting a pig's throat or strangling a chicken does not appeal.

Nor does hunting with a woomera - a murderous spear-throwing device. 'It's not nice,' says John. 'But it's different if you have to feed your family.

I'd rather catch fish, but I will kill a pig if I have to.' Liz says, 'I think it's going to be hard eating a meal that was walking around your plot just before you cooked it. The original settlers used to have to kill and eat a sheep on the same day, otherwise it would be crawling with maggots.' Just in case their nerve fails them at the last, they have gained weight to put off the effects of near-starvation. 'I've been diving into the biscuit tin whenever possible,' says Liz. 'I always had a six-pack, but now I've got a one-pack,' adds John, grabbing his modest spare tyre.

Since their cabin will be a single room crammed with beds, a wood fire, and whatever furniture they can make, the four are resigned to living on top of one another, and believe they will get along without squabbling. But John and Liz accept that their love life will suffer. 'If he gets giddy I'll send him down to the river to cool off,' giggles Liz. 'There'll be nothing going on in that cabin,' he says.

The couple believe they'll mix well with their Irish and Australian neighbours. However, the treatment of the convicts is a matter for debate.

Liz is all for working with them 'shoulder to shoulder', but fears John will act the Draconian colonial landlord. 'His first reaction was to tie them up at night,' she says.

'It'll be nice to boss people around because I do what other people tell me most of the time,' John counters. 'I think I'll enjoy that. I'll work with them, but maybe not do as much manual labour.' So what will they miss most about home? For Liz, it's her new, king-size bed; for Tyler, his den and his dog. John can't think of anything much, apart from tuna sandwiches. As for Carina, she wishes they could live in The Colony for longer than four months.

'I'll quote you on that in a few weeks' time,' smiles her father, adding, 'I think there will be tears, and tempers are bound to fray when you have sleep deprivation and not enough food. That said, I think it will be a life-changing situation. The excitement's starting to build now, and I feel like a kid at Christmas waiting for my presents. We really don't know what's waiting around the corner.' Indeed, but let's just hope it isn't a funnelweb spider. They don't change people's lives - they terminate them.

The courage of their convicts

Australia is a vast island continent, but the early settlers made their homes north-west of Sydney, on a broad valley running beside the Hawkesbury-Nepean River. Today, the area is a pleasant weekend retreat for city dwellers. But between 1800 and 1815, the period covered by The Colony series, life in 'The Hawkesbury' was a daily battle for survival. In winter, the swollen river frequently flooded the farmland; in summer wooden homes were razed by raging forest fires and crops ruined by drought.

Pestilence and venereal disease were rife and, because wages were often paid with tots of rum, the majority of settlers were alcoholics.

The civilian population of just a few hundred included many released criminals, or 'emancipists'. To avoid chaos, the governors laid down rigorous rules, which frequently changed. Free settlers, like the Stephensons, initially received a Land Grant of 100 acres, plus two convicts for a year, clothing and tools: handsaw, crosscut saw, billhook, two hoes, tomahawks, nails, an iron pot, one old musket, gunpowder and musket-balls.

There was a high ratio of men to women settlers and homosexuality was common. This caused such concern that boatloads of female convicts were shipped from England for distribution as servants. One such shipment, containing 230 women, was named 'the floating brothel'.

The convict men were assigned tough jobs, such as fence-making and logging, and also fished using frogs for bait. The women sowed wheat and barley, fed the hogs, fetched water, chased cockatoos from the ripening crops, milked the cows and cleaned.

Secretly, however, some settlers also used the female convicts as mistresses. Incompetent convicts could not be sacked, like free workers, but they could be swapped for other settlers' servants.

No money was sent to the new Australia, so deals were sealed by bartering and IOUs. As traders came from Holland, India and Britain, guilders, rupees and guineas began to circulate. The arrival of a ship carrying clothes or spices would be heralded by blasts on a bullock horn.

Communication was by word-ofmouth or message via horseback, and news came via the Sydney Gazette, a Sunday broadsheet informing people of government orders and proclamations, adverts and snippets from overseas. Common pastimes were cock and dogfighting; bareknuckle prizefighting was the top spectator sport, and horseracing was just becoming popular. Wagers were placed and debts collected at the point of a cut-throat razor.

For the resourceful in the colony rewards were high. Ex-convict Andrew Thompson opened a store, started a grain transport business, and owned 371 acres of land by 1805, and was the largest labour supplier, with 124 employees.