With their comatose daughter suspected of manslaughter, and police on their way to the hospital, two troubled parents must decide whether to lie to protect her.

Frank Mollard, divorced but still attached, can't move on and also can't sell a house in a property boom, much less connect with his teenage son. One night Frank gets a phone call from his mother. Nothing out of the ordinary there – apart from the fact that she died the year before.

In the opal mining red dirt of Andamooka, South Australia; a son faces the memories of the mysterious disappearance of his father in a great flooding storm, while the same storm appears on his own horizon.

Living in the middle of Australia's desolate landscape, Angela has been waiting all her life. Waiting for her boyfriend to return from the army and marry her, waiting for her mother to sober up, waiting for her life to begin. On the return of her boyfriend Will, Angela looks around at her bleak surroundings, her friends with their unplanned pregnancies, desperate marriages, and dead-end jobs and realizes that she cannot spend the rest of her life in a small town with no future. As Will prepares to return to the army and her mother prepares to move in with yet another man, Angela makes a decision that will change her life forever.