After ten years of travelling abroad, Alex returns to his childhood home in Melbourne: a big old house with a tower overlooking a creek where his mother Aspacia and his cousin Mick still live.
Alex discovers that his cousin and his mother share a secret. Both had known the hidden occupant of a shack shrouded in blackberries and bushland on the opposite side of the creek. Alex had been forbidden from crossing the creek as a child and had spent years wondering who lived in the hut. He learns that the secret man had not been seen for many years. Mick tells Alex he never knew the man's full name or where he came from.
Alex enters the hut, drawn by the childhood mystery. What he uncovers leads him to revisit his family's dark history, encompassing the German occupation of Crete, the death of Mick's parents and an orange farm on the Murray River. In this way, Alex eventually finds what he has been running from.