In the real world you can't just do what you want. In the real world you have to compromise. Mark Blazey does not want to live in the real world. Living in a semi-industrial coastal town, seventeen-year old Mark is a smart kid from a chaotic family who has just thrown away a scholarship to a private school and found himself at the local high. At school Mark is zeroed in on by an overbearing principal who dominates everything around him. At home Mark is dealing with a jail-bound brother, his grandmother is fighting for her life, and a mum who's short fuse is kept doused with cask wine. His little sister is someone he wants to protect. When Mark finds his first real love he tries to escape all the forces in his life with her. But his love is with the daughter of his nemesis, the school principal. Simmering tensions boil over between the student and the teacher, between the son and his mother.

A collection of short films based on stories by Australian writer Tim Winton.

A con artist escapes a deal gone wrong in New York and winds up in the Aussie outback in a strange town whose inhabitants are an oddball collection of misfits.

Born charmer Sean Okden gave up tap-dancing when he started working in the steel mill, but as that's going down the hill he grabs his chance being the only candidate in his coastal Australian home town Newcastle selected for a Sidney show. Being sacked soon just for a row with the arrogant lead dancer, he returns to find his girlfriend in bed with his brother Mitchell, and decides to start his own tap-dance group wearing hardhats, which he soon gives an original edge when the steel mill inspires him to weld metal on their shoes and dance on industrial steel, so it the metallic acoustics fit well with a local rock group. Financing their local debut is so expensive, even when the mill allows them free us of its premises -opening some acrobatic perspectives- while even his father won't allow him to touch his mother's inheritance for the project, that the 'Bootmen' need to steal the cheerleaders' podium in a televised sports match to get media attention. Sean generously helps his brother ...

A young girl's view on belonging and loss.