IRA mercenary Sean Keating arrives as an illegal immigrant in Australia under the patronage of his Scottish friend, farmer-fisherman Bryan O'Rourke. Keating unexpectedly murders a paedophile priest at a political gathering in Melbourne, and escapes with the schoolboy victim Ryan, to O'Rourke's farm on the Monaro. Bryan is shipwrecked and returns to the farm. Renegade drug dealer Tom lands Ryan in trouble, then leads a winter skidoo chase through the Snowy Mountains. "The Awakening" is the tempering of an unlikely assortment of tough men as a result of the powerful landscape of the Monaro and Snowy Mountains.