John Grant is a young, middle-class schoolteacher who feels disgruntled by the onerous terms of a government-backed financial bond he signed to fund his education. The bond binds him to a two-year posting at a tiny school in the remote outback town of Tiboonda, setting him on a path far from the city he longs for. As the Christmas holidays begin, he plans to travel to Sydney to see his girlfriend Robyn, but first he must ride a train to Bundanyabba, the desert town locals affectionately call “The Yabba,” where a fateful layover awaits.
In The Yabba, John stops at a pub and meets the town’s recognizable figure, Jock Crawford, a steadying presence who befriends him after long drinks at the pub and later at an RSL club. Crawford introduces him to the rough pleasures and perils of the local scene, including the illegal game of two-up, and he is drawn to the enigmatic, disheveled medical practitioner Doc Tydon, a man who questions John’s scorn for the town’s quirky, sun-scorched inhabitants. Doc is a physician who has wandered far from his professional ambitions, and his sharp, often bleak worldview begins to gnaw at John as he tests his own beliefs about civilization and freedom.
John’s luck at two-up ebbs quickly. A hot streak turns capricious, and his attempts to win enough money to discharge his bond crash to ruin. Stranded with no money, he confronts the brutal heat and the town’s simmering tensions, his vulnerability exposed under the glare of the outback sun. He befriends Tim Hynes, a grim, quietly sturdy man who lives with his daughter, Janette Hynes, and two rough friends, miners Dick and Joe. The day stretches into a relentless drinking session that eventually draws Doc into the circle. John converses with Janette, who secretly desires a life beyond waiting on her father and his companions, but her bold, unsettling advances toward him leave him unsettled and queasy, partly from the alcohol, partly from the moment’s intrusion into his carefully framed stubborn disdain.
As the gathering devolves into debauched rituals, John finds refuge in Doc’s isolated shack. There, after Doc tends to his hangover and serves up kangaroo meat, the older man unfolds a stark philosophy about living apart from conventional society. He reveals his own regrets—alcoholism that derailed his chance to practice in Sydney—and confides that he and Janette maintain a long-standing open relationship marked by unconventional encounters. A drunken kangaroo hunt with Dick and Joe follows, lasting into the night, culminating in Joe’s clash with a kangaroo and John’s clumsy killing of another joey-like animal, a violent echo of the civilization’s savagery Doc has warned about. The group then vandalizes a bush pub, a moment of reckless camaraderie that interrupts Doc’s lecture about civilization’s violence and humanity’s darker impulses.
Dawn reveals more: a hesitant, ambiguous moment between John and Doc, hinting at a homosexual encounter that leaves John shaken and disoriented. He flees back to town, where his luggage—left at a hotel after his visit with Tim—arrives via Crawford, who returns one bag and helps him prepare for the road again. He discards one suitcase, filled largely with textbooks including a Plato volume, and begins wandering desert roads, hitching rides with truck drivers wherever he can and scavenging with the rifle given during the hunt. A truck stop encounter offers a glimmer of possible escape to Sydney, but miscommunication foils the plan and John is forced to return to The Yabba.
Consumed by anger toward Doc and what he represents, John races to his empty cabin intent on shooting him upon his return. Yet loneliness overpowers him, and in a moment of despair he turns the rifle on himself. Doc arrives to witness John’s gunshot wound to the temple; the impact scars him but does not kill him. He recovers in the hospital and signs Crawford’s statement declaring that his suicide attempt was an accident. Weeks pass, and Doc accompanies him to the railway station, where a quiet, fragile peace settles between them. No longer scornful of the outback’s inhabitants, John grows in confidence and begins to see himself anew. He accepts a simple beer from fellow travelers on the train and returns to Tiboonda to begin the new school year, ready to teach with a tempered, more humane understanding of the land he once despised.
