The plot centres on Queensland's Gold Coast in the early 1980s, when a disgraced former cop, Michael Stacey writes a book exposing police corruption, does an investigation resulting in 2 murders, exposes a religious cult and watches the army begin a military coup.

Based on the well-loved Australian classic by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, this is the remarkable true story of Jeannie Gunn, a woman who fought to overcome sexual and racial prejudice amid the harsh beauties of the outback. Leaving her Melbourne existence for a new life on her husband's isolated ranch, Jeannie's feisty, good-natured attitude soon wins over the misogynistic stockmen, but she faces a much tougher challenge in trying to change their racist attitudes towards the indigenous aboriginal population.

Filmed in the Clare Valley, Gladstone and the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, this prison movie was inspired by the true life prison riot at Bathurst Jail in 1974 and its subsequent Royal Commission into New South Wales Prisons.