In a grim world made crazy after a cyber-terrorist attack, fifteen-year-old Hamish Waterboy leaves his teen wife and the relative safety of his home to journey through Victoria in search of women to help repopulate the tiny, dying community of Plunkettville. Along the way Hamish reluctantly teams up with Shazza, a crazy old hermit woman who takes him to the city of the War Women, a separatist community on the coast. Hamish is in very real danger of losing his tongue, and his life, as even Shazza turns against him. After some fast talking, he convinces a group of women to journey back to Plunkettville with him, and the inevitable happens - they become lost in the high country of Victoria. The new world is populated by ragged remnants of humanity, and particularly feared are the evil and savage Bordermen from Melbourne, the 'City of Death'. When Hamish is captured by a raiding party of Bordermen, it looks like the end of the road for Plunkettville and the pioneering families who built it - not to mention the end of Hamish Waterboy.