In the warm alkaline waters of the public bath a headstrong young engineer accidently collides with a beautful actress. From this innocent collision of flesh begins a passion that takes them from the Wiltshire downs to the most elemental choices of life and death in the Australian desert. Their intense romance is but part of the daring story that unfolds. Mingling history, myth and technology with a modern cinematic and poetic imagination, Robert Drewe presents a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape and a sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force.