A property developer wants to take over an Australian beach for a high rise resort. He sends his son to Australia to check out the situation, posing as an exchange lifeguard. He falls in love with a woman who owns the land his father needs for the development and finds himself sympathising with the locals.

An adult's memoir of a childhood spent with his mother and two sisters in Australia in the closing year of WWII. While his father off fighting the Japanese, two Italian prisoners of war are assigned to help out on the family's estate. Later they are joined by two German refugee women. Problems of country life and personal tensions come to a head.