Lay preacher George Williams and Richard Lucas are vainly trying to muster support for miners' rights when news comes of the discovery of a large gold nugget. Constable Colvin has been assigned to escort Gold Commissioner Edmund Fitzalan, newly arrived from India, to the Crockers Gully goldfields. Fitzalan's duties overlap those of the Sergeant of Troopers, Robert McKellar, and there is an ill-disguised hostility between them due to their differing backgrounds. Fitzalan was impressed by Const. Colvin, newly appointed to McKellar's detachment, and appoints him as his orderly. Colvin, a notorious police spy despised by everyone, falls out of favour with Fitzalan when he is found drunk after making advances on Mary Dwyer, the proprietor of a sly grog tent. Also arriving on the goldfields is English lady Sarah Lucas, whose first duty is to bury her husband who died on the voyage to Australia.
Sgt. McKellar cautions three notorious troublemakers, Watson, O'Toole and Jones, who hire an Aboriginal worker, Wongerra, to guide them to the new gold find at Ben-Ga-Dee Creek in return for a few bottles of spirits. Jones suspects that Wongerra is taking them on a wild goose chase and tortures Wongerra, leaving him tied to a tree. He is found by Sgt. McKellar, but it is too late to save his life. Comm. Fitzalan is determined that the troublemakers will be brought to justice.
Hard working miner Mick Draper has done well at the diggings, and plans to form a partnership with his friend Jim Hill. However things do not turn out that way when Hill talks Draper into trying for quicker gains by robbing the mail coach. They get away with their loot, but never savour success. Meanwhile, Mick's wife Amy joins Jim's wife Jessie in drinking at the Miners Pub.
English prize fighter Gentleman Jim Dawson comes to the goldfields with two friends, Symons and Green, supposedly to pan for gold. Instead, they intend to cheat the miners by getting them to bet on Gentleman Jim when a fight is staged - and rigged - with one of the local toughs, Peter Hackett. The miner's anger is aroused when Comm. Fitzalan orders that the fight be held in a closed tent with only himself and selected guests present. Sgt. McKellar has to act swiftly in order to prevent a riot, and the ensuing action provides an opportunity for a wandering priest, in whose care the bets have been entrusted, to sneak away with the money.
Gold Commissioner Fitzalan unwittingly instigates another disturbance on the Crockers Gully goldfields when he appoints Dr. Kirby as a temporary teacher. Dr. Kirby's appointment is opposed by the Reverend Smith, who is anxious to safeguard the children of Crockers Gully from what he considers to be Dr. Kirby's subversive teachings. The hostility between the two sparks off a riot among the miners.
Peter Shaw-Jones, an asthmatic young son of English landed gentry, comes to Crockers Gully to seek his fortune. Unused to hard physical labour, he is overwhelmed by the rigours of prospecting and decides to return to England, but his pleas for financial assistance go unheeded by Commissioner Fitzalan. Desperate and ill, Shaw-Jones risks going down a mine at night and is trapped in a cave-in.
When Brendan O'Hara is wrongly accused of failure to hold a miner's licence, Fitzalan refuses to believe the story. Later O'Hara is elected as the people's commissioner, and Fitzalan resorts to sly tactics to maintain control over the goldfields.
When a fever epidemic sweeps Crockers Gully, young Jessie Smith's father dies, and Sarah takes the girl to see the Reverend Mr. Fisher. He suggests that Jessie should stay with with Miss Hawk of 'Ilangi', for whom he has the highest regard. When Miss hawk's sheep are infected with scab and need dipping, she asks Comm. Fitzalan to led her some diggers.
Peggy O'Shea, the Irish lark, arrives at Crockers Gully to prepare for her tour of the gold fields. Other new arrivals are a Chinese family who are befriended by Sarah Lucas. Sarah suggests that their 18-year-old daughter Yin Soong becomes Fitzalan's housekeeper. The Gully doctor calls unexpectedly on Fitzalan, and notices a tender relationship blossoming between the two. Yin Soong falls in love with her employer, and Fitzalan fears that soon the whole camp will know of his affair, and that the miners will not take kindly to her.
Jones and Brady have been chained to a tree while awaiting trial, but they break free and go bush. They take over a tent belonging to a couple of prospectors, killing one and injuring the other, while planning their next big robbery. Later, Fitzalan and his party, who are travelling from Melbourne with a valuable consignment, are awaiting a police escort at the Welcome Nugget Inn when Jones and Brady burst in. They hold Fitzalan's party at gunpoint, wreak havoc at the inn and take Sarah hostage before Sgt. McKellar arrives with the police escort.
A badly wounded Aboriginal girl, Werowey, is brought to Dr. Woods. Sarah offers to care for her, and Williams is sympathetic and worried for Werowey, but Lansdowne and Fitzalan consider all Aboriginals are savages. Their opinion is reinforced when miner Withers is brought in dead. McKellar is sent by Fitzalan to hunt the killers, and he and his men come upon the remains of an Aboriginal camp where white men killed the other Aboriginals and took their women. Determined to release the Aboriginals, McKellar refuses to handcuff them and they escape. He returns to Crockers Gully to face Fitzalan's wrath.
Sarah Lucas' anxious father, the wealthy industrialist Hindmarsh, arrives at Crockers Gully to persuade her to return to England with him - the two had been somewhat estranged as he had not approves of Sarah's late husband. During Hindmarsh's journey to the goldfields he is attacked by a bushranger, but manages to escape after shooting his assailant in the shoulder. The bushranger turns out to be Richard Lucas, Sarah's brother-in-law, who has lived the life of an outlaw since he avoided arrest back when Sarah first arrived at Crockers Gully. Sarah convinces her father that she wishes to remain in Australia, and her relationship with McKellar improves and they become engaged, with McKellar intending to marry Sarah and leave the police force.
After years of roaming aimlessly following the death of his wife Sarah, McKellar arrives in Turon Springs in NSW as a trouble-shooter for the Great Eastern Mining Company. Subsequent events see him enticed back into the police force by Supt. Kendall.
Widow Melanie Parker owns five acres of land which Farrar desperately needs to appease his shareholders, so he hires security man Henry de Witt to apply pressure - but he goes too far, and kills her friend Billy Adams.
A gipsy family is a convenient scapegoat when rioting miners seek vengeance on an unknown police informer.
Sgt. McKellar confronts Farrar over the mystery of a skeleton and a gold earring found by two miners in a bush grave on Great Eastern land. An elderly Chinese man recognises the earring as the final clue in the long search for his missing daughter.
Farrar has a rival when the Chevalier de Vaucluse arrives in Turon Springs and sets up a major new mining venture, with many miners leaving the Great Eastern to work for the new concern.
McKellar competes against Farrar in a horse race to win back money intended for a young orphan girl. The money was left to her by her dying father, a victim of an epidemic in the area, but was gambled away by the man to whom it was entrusted.
Sgt. McKellar and Supt. Kendall clash over Farrar's treatment of the Curran family who have settled on crown land he uses for sheep. Although legally eligible to settle, the Currans are removed as trespassers by Farrar, who employs underhand methods. The same methods are used against the local newspaper proprietor when he comes to their aid.
In pursuit of the notorious bushranger Jack Jessop, Sgt. McKellar captures his girlfriend and shoots dead one of his brothers. Jessop seeks revenge, and McKellar faces a shootout in the main street of Turon Springs.
Sgt. McKellar and Supt. Kendall both become involved when a kleptomaniac comes to Turon Springs to visit his estranged wife.
McKellar is on the trail of an Aboriginal fugitive, who is feared to be a kadaitcha man by his tracker.
Sgt. McKellar is seriously injured when a bank robbery is attempted while Turon Springs is deserted due to surrounding bushfires.
Three inexperienced bushrangers attempt to hijack a large gold nugget en route to Bathurst.
McKellar becomes personally involved when Tim Thomas leads the miners in direct action against the Great Eastern in support of a pay rise.
A behind the scenes preview of the second series of Rush, including interviews with cast members John Waters, Alain Doutey, Vincent Ball and Paul Mason.
