The story of John Grant, a bonded teacher who arrives in the rough outback mining town of Bundanyabba, plans to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney, Australia. But, as his one night stretches to five, he plunges headlong toward his own destruction. When the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate wasteland, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at a rifle with one bullet left.