A Far Off Place (1993) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Ricketts murdered Nonnie's parents and Harry's father because they were investigating his illegal ivory export operation. Paul Parker, Nonnie's father, had discovered that Ricketts was secretly running a poaching operation and was about to expose it. Ricketts ordered his men to kill the adults to silence them and cover up his criminal enterprise.

Foreshadowing: The film hints at the poaching operation early when Nonnie mentions her parents' work fighting elephant poachers.

• john ricketts
• poaching
• ivory
• murder
• conspiracy

After witnessing her parents' murders, Nonnie hid from the approaching poachers. She managed to grab explosives from the house and attached them to the bottom of the poachers' truck, killing several of Ricketts's men. She then fled to the cave where Xhabbo was hiding, and the bushman advised her to head west across the desert.

• explosives
• escape
• poachers
• truck bombing
• xhabbo

When Xhabbo tells Nonnie and Harry to 'follow the wind,' he is advising them to head west across the Kalahari Desert toward the Atlantic coast. This is the traditional bushman knowledge of how to survive in the desert, traveling with the wind's direction helps avoid getting lost and leads to cooler conditions. The phrase becomes their guiding principle for the 2,000-kilometer journey to Karlstown.

Foreshadowing: Xhabbo's desert wisdom is established earlier when he teaches Nonnie about the land during the leopard attack.

• follow the wind
• xhabbo
• kalahari desert
• west
• journey

At the edge of the desert, Xhabbo communicates with a herd of elephants and convinces them to follow behind Nonnie, Harry, and himself. The elephants' massive footprints mask the trio's tracks, making it impossible for Ricketts's pursuers to track them. This allows the runaways to move through the desert undetected while the elephants essentially cover their trail.

• elephants
• tracks
• escape
• pursuit
• kalahari

Colonel Mopani Theron, a friend of the Parker family, learns about the attack and organizes a search party. Unaware that Ricketts is behind the murders, Theron orders Ricketts to lead the aerial search because Ricketts knows the area and has resources. This ironically puts the killer in charge of finding his own victims, allowing Ricketts to continue hunting them while maintaining his cover.

• ricketts
• theron
• aerial search
• conspiracy
• search party

Harry creates decoy bodies by stuffing their clothes with straw and placing them in the sand, hoping to trick a rescue plane. However, when the plane arrives, Ricketts and his men are aboard. Believing they have found the missing children, the poachers gun down the decoys. Nonnie realizes from hiding that Ricketts is personally leading the hunt, confirming his murderous intentions.

Foreshadowing: The tension between rescue and capture is established when Nonnie warns Harry that the plane might be poachers, not helpers.

• straw decoy
• plane
• ricketts
• shoot
• hunt

When Ricketts's helicopter approaches as Xhabbo lies weakened from a scorpion sting, Nonnie and Xhabbo perform the Bushman spiritual practice of 'tapping', they weakly thump their chests. This ancient ritual is believed to summon natural forces. The scene depicts a powerful sandstorm rising that forces Ricketts to flee, saving the trio from capture. The film presents this as genuine Bushman spirituality connecting humans to nature.

• tapping
• sandstorm
• bushman
• spiritual
• ritual
• xhabbo

After the sandstorm forces Ricketts to retreat, the exhausted trio continues westward. Unbeknownst to them, they are only a few hundred yards from the Atlantic coast. They fall unconscious from exhaustion and dehydration, and somehow make it to Karlstown, where they wake up in a hospital. The film leaves the exact rescue ambiguous, suggesting they were found near the coast and transported to medical care.

• karlstown
• hospital
• unconscious
• coast
• rescue

After recovering in the hospital, Nonnie and Harry accompany Colonel Theron to Ricketts's mining facility. They discover his hidden hoard of elephant tusks and rig the place with dynamite. When Ricketts arrives, they lure him outside and light the fuse. Ricketts panics and runs back into the mine trying to extinguish the flame or save his tusks, but the dynamite explodes and buries him alive within the facility.

• ricketts
• mining facility
• dynamite
• tusks
• explosion
• death

Throughout their harrowing two-month journey across the Kalahari, Nonnie and Harry transform from quarreling strangers into close companions. Harry learns bushcraft, speaks Xhabbo's language, and gifts Nonnie a gemsbok fur garment he made. Their shared survival experience and growing respect for each other leads to the kiss at the airport, marking a romantic development between them.

Foreshadowing: Harry's gift of the gemsbok fur garment demonstrates his changing character and growing affection for Nonnie.

• kiss
• romance
• harry
• nonnie
• relationship
• farewell

After bidding farewell to Xhabbo and kissing Nonnie at the airport, Harry boards a plane to return to New York. However, he changes his mind and comes back to the charred Parker home where Nonnie is cleaning up the ruins. The ending suggests Harry cannot leave Nonnie behind after everything they shared, choosing to stay and begin a new life together rather than return to his old spoiled life in New York.

• harry return
• new york
• parker home
• reunion
• ending

Nonnie's determination to survive is driven by her desire for justice after witnessing her parents' murder. She is also motivated by her responsibility to protect Harry, who starts as a helpless city kid. Her optimism and wildlife knowledge, learned from her parents, give her the mental strength to endure the 2,000-kilometer journey while Harry complains about the difficulty.

• nonnie
• motivation
• survival
• justice
• parents