For William Black the opportunity to become an Australian of aboriginal descent in charge of a prison presents a number of challenges; for him, and the staff he inherits, at a jail that, in the early 1990s has not seen, or desired change for decades. His wife looks forward to the opportunity for her independence as the owner of her own restaurant. Inevitably William's efforts to make the changes he believes are necessary meet resistance, and his wife's ambitions become intertwined with the behind the scenes' manoeuvring of his opposition; an opposition setting out to defeat him at any cost. William Black's story is not so much about the survival of the fittest as about the definition of who is the fittest for a very different environment!