The story of an Aboriginal family's attempts to forge a new life for themselves within the segregated society. At the urging of headstrong teenager Trilby, the Comeaways relocate from their family camp, to a house in the main town.

A rowdy rock group are accompanied by a film crew to desolate Lake Infinity to produce a music video. One night the musicians visit the local pub while the various members of the film crew satisfy their carnal desires with one another aboard the luxurious houseboat they are all staying in. They are so busy they fail to notice that a rampaging lunatic has snuck aboard the boat, and one by one the various characters are brutally slaughtered in a variety of grisly ways.

The year is 1933. Ruby Rose (Melita Jurisic) is an Australian woman living with her Welsh immigrant husband Henry (Chris Haywood) in the Tasmanian highlands. Cut off from her superjudgmental family, for whom Henry had once worked as a humble farm hand, Ruby remains isolated in her tiny house. Superstitiously terrified of the dark, she begins developing her own folklore about the inky blackness that surrounds her each night; this folklore eventually develops into Ruby's own personal religion, created to ward off the evils that she imagines lurk in every corner. Only by venturing out of her house and rekindling her relationship with her embittered father is Ruby able to exorcise her fears. Almost hypnotic in its stark beauty, Tale of Ruby Rose is proof enough that writer/director Roger Scholes deserves to be far better known.