A schoolteacher (John Waters) becomes obsessed with the idea that his wife (Joy Bell) did not die in a car accident, as everyone else thinks.

Based on the 1910 novel by Henry Handel Richardson, thought to be an account of her own schooldays at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne. A young girl, Laura Tweedle-Rambotham who grew up in the outback, and at around the age of 14, is sent off by her poor mother who has scrimped and saved for her to go to a prestigious women’s private college in Melbourne, the Presbyterian Ladies College.

Sent to rescue survivors from the site of a plane crash in the South Pacific during WWII, Captain Kelly and his elite squad of Australian commandos must keep tabs on a defecting Japanese official who could hold the secret to peace.