The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.

As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.

This classic saga spans the early days of British settlement in Australia from 1788-1811, depicting the lives of a group of people, convicts and settlers, against the background of the events of the period - Governor Phillip's attempts to understand the Aborigines and his conflicts with the military, the tragic story of Bennelong, Governors King and Bligh, the Rum Rebellion, Macquarie and the crossing of the Blue Mountains.

Through lyrical images, Manganinnie journeys across mountains towards the coast with Joanna, a white girl, in search of Manganinnie's vanished tribe. The poignancy of this film derives from the Aboriginal woman's gradual realization that her people and the tribal way of life are forever gone. It is the story of the Black Drive of 1830, the near-genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines.