Lena is a fair-skinned girl of mixed race, who lives with her Aboriginal mother and brother in a small, isolated country town. She longs for the Irish father she never really knew and one day when her home life feels set to implode, she ups and leaves, hitting the road with little money, a backpack and a photo of her dad.

Vaughn is in a minimum-security prison in country western NSW. He is a teenage indigenous boy who spends all his time in the plantation pine forest in the prison. Like many young aboriginal men, he is hardened by his anger at the world. He is disconnected from his family, but news of his mother’s illness prompts him to break out of prison in the hope of reaching her before it is too late.

Vaughn meets Lena at a truck stop on the road to Sydney. Initially both are suspicious and wary of each other, but their journey, mostly by foot and the odd bit of hitch hiking, brings each of them closer to their search for purpose, identity and love.