Carpentaria

In the 19th century, a group of British colonists establish a town along the banks of a wide, deep river that flows to the sea in Australia’s Northern Territory. Their plans to establish a port are frustrated, however, when the river abruptly changes course, leaving them high and dry. The 20th-century descendants of these original settlers have fierce pride in their history and little respect for outsiders—or the Aboriginal Australian people whose land they stole.

Aboriginal families like that of Norm Phantom and Angel Day are consigned to live in the Pricklebush outskirts of Desperance proper. Many of them, like Angel, construct shanties and houses out of material scavenged from the Desperance dump. One day, throwing her weight around at the dump, she insults half of the Aboriginal community, telling them they don’t belong. In response, they pick up and move their homesteads to the other side of town. Westside Pricklebush still mostly follows along with Norm and Angel, while Eastside gives its loyalty to Joseph Midnight.

One day, after a huge storm at sea, an amnesiac White sailor washes ashore. The town christens the man “Elias Smith,” welcomes him as a citizen, and makes him town watchman. During the years Elias lives in Desperance, he and Norm become loyal friends. But when a series of arson attempts culminates in the destruction of the Shire Council Offices, the town blames Elias and exiles him.

Meanwhile, the sleepy town of Desperance gets an exciting economic boost when an international business conglomerate decides to establish a mineral mine of some sort in the area. Joseph Midnight, whose people came from territory to the west at some point, takes advantage of the Indigenous land rights laws to stake—and then sell—a claim on the land where the mine sits. This further vilifies him in the eyes of most Westsiders, especially Norm.

Two of Norm’s sons, Donny and Inso, escape their Pricklebush upbringing by taking jobs at the mine. Eventually, Norm’s youngest son, Kevin, follows them. Despite his early academic promise, there are no other opportunities for an Aboriginal kid like him. An accident on his first day in the mine renders him permanently disabled. Other calamities befall the family, too. Angel Day abandons Norm and their children for Aboriginal visionary and holy man Mozzie Fishman. None of the Phantom daughters—Patsy, Janice, or Girlie—has a happy marriage. And Norm’s fourth son, the once-favored Will, falls afoul of his father when he resorts to sabotage to oppose the mine and—worse—when he falls in love with and marries Joseph Midnight’s daughter Hope. Together, the couple has a son named Bala, but Will skips town with Mozzie and Mozzie’s convoy of followers when suspicion falls on him for a series of explosions along the mine’s expensive transportation tunnel.

After two years on the road with Mozzie, however, Will returns to Desperance. At a lagoon just outside the sprawl of Desperance proper and the Pricklebush, they find the corpse of Elias Smith. Will knows the mine workers desecrated the body of his father’s—and his—friend as a threat to him. Sure enough, no sooner has he retrieved the body than mine employees descend on the lagoon looking for him. Forutnately, Will evades their notice through a combination of his skilled bushcraft and a sudden rainstorm.

Will sneaks back into town and leaves Elias’s body in Norm’s fish room, knowing that his father will lay Elias to rest. Later that night, after finding the body, Norm secretly smuggles it out to sea in his boat, intending to bury Elias at a secret groper fishing spot the two once shared. It takes him days to reach the spot and almost as soon as he consigns Elias’ body to the water, he’s caught in a storm that blows him wildly off course. He washes up on an unknown island where he discovers Bala. Initially gruff and standoffish with his grandson because Bala is related to Norm’s perceived enemy Midnight, when a storm endangers Bala’s life, Norm has a change of heart and risks his own life to rescue his grandson. Besides, Bala is alone: not long before Norm arrived, mine employees in a helicopter carried off Hope. Bala describes hearing her scream as she fell into the sea from their helicopter.

The same night that Norm left with Elias, Will speaks to Joseph Midnight, who tells him that the authorities began to put pressure on Hope after Will fled. Midnight asked Elias Smith to help, and when he was exiled, Elias smuggled Bala and Hope out to sea with the intent of leaving them on an island refuge Midnight knew about. Midnight tells Will how to find this island and gives Will his boat. It takes Will several days to reach the island, and when he does, he finds mine employees rather than his family. Cookie and Chuck quickly capture Will, bind him, and throw him into a helicopter to carry him back to the mainland. On the flight, the blindfolded Will thinks he hears Hope scream as she plummets to her death from the helicopter, but he can’t be sure it wasn’t his imagination.

During the time Norm and Will are on their voyages, a scandal breaks out in Desperance. Gordie, Elias’s successor as watchman, turns up murdered. Constable Truthful E’Strange arrests the three Aboriginal boys on whom suspicion quickly falls: Tristrum Fishman, Luke Fishman, and Aaron Ho Kum. Desperance Mayor Bruiser conducts their interrogation by means of a vicious beating. The boys have no answers to his questions not only because they’re innocent but because no one even explains the charges to them. Left alone in their jail cell, the three boys hang themselves. The same night, the town takes justice into its own hands when a group of White boys beat Kevin Phantom to within an inch of his life as a sacrificial victim to atone for Gordie’s death.

Cookie and Chuck hold Will in a hangar on the mine’s property, and some of Mozzie’s scouts discover him. Mozzie orders a rescue operation that ultimately destroys the mine when the fires set by Mozzie’s followers cause massive fuel tanks to explode. In the wee hours of the morning, while the fire is still raging, Mozzie disbands his convoy. He takes a handful of men, including Will, to a sacred site where he buries Tristrum, Luke, and Aaron, whose bodies he quietly retrieved from the jail.

Afterwards, Will heads back to Desperance despite the threat of an incoming cyclone. He rides out the storm in the Fisherman’s Hotel and is then swept out to sea by the receding floodwaters. A magical island knits itself together out of trash to give him safe harbor.

Somehow, Hope turns up safe and sound on the beach before Bala and Norm set sail for Desperance. They take her with them. When they arrive, they find that the storm has wiped away every trace of the town. Hope, who’s been having visions of Will’s island, takes Norm’s boat back out to sea to find her husband. Norm plans to rebuild his house and take care of Bala while they wait for Hope and Will to return.