It's the Bicentennial year and for Gordon - failed writer and bottleshop boy - it seems his life is going nowhere. It's time to escape. From his overcrowded house, from Brisbane, from Expo '88, from everything. He stumbles into Wayne who has connections in Darwin and the promise of work. So the two of them head north towards swamps and crocodiles and sands flies innumerable, in search of inspiration, and of their rightful place in the culture of a nation.