In a passion of resentment, Muriel McGrath makes the sudden fatal decision to leave her husband and their hill-billy existence on a run-down property at Ellinsfield for good.  she bundles their two boys into the car and drives across the rarely-used road over Craig's Spur on her way to Melbourne. She takes a corner too fast...a door swings open...the wheels lurch...and the car crashes down the slope. Muriel dies later that evening. Three year old Tommy has been catapulted out of the car. Ten year old Pete squirms out of the wreckage before it slips further down the bank. They are miraculously unhurt - but alone in the bush, with night falling, they are panic-stricken and wander off into the bush. A wide scale search is launched, a search which affects the searchers as much as it does the lost boys.