Outer Maroo, a small opal mining town in the Australian outback, is stewing in heat, drought, and guilty anxiety. Some ghastly cataclysm has occurred on the opal fields, but this is a taboo subject. When, from time to time, strangers arrive looking for missing children, they mysteriously disappear. Until the day two strangers, on the trail of a missing son and a daughter, refuse to succumb to accidents. The repressed secrets begin to dislodge themselves. Once the walls against the past begin to come down, nothing can stop the avalanche. And at the heart of this mystery is the cult Messiah, Oyster, dressed in white, sexually compelling, and preaching the end of time.