The outback station of Wallaby is in the grip of a drought. Unable to stop the bank from repossessing his land, veteran farmer Jo Galloway is forced to move his wife and daughter to the city in the hope that his son Gilbert can help them. Gilbert has supposedly been studying there, but Jo soon finds out that he has been corrupted by the highlife. Worse, Gilbert has long been embezzling the family funds to support his life of luxury and decadence. A number of 'melodramatic' episodes unfold, including a murder and a suicide, before the family is finally able to unite and return to the Wallaby (just as the rains begin to fall once more).
John Tulloch, in Legends on the Screen (1981), notes that the natural threat of drought (represented in naturalistic mode) and the social threat constituted by the corrupt city (in melodramatic mode) are, in effect, opposite sides of the same coin. The independent bush woman, Molly (see A Girl in the Bush), appears to represent the 'right' balance between nature and culture.
