Carrie, a desert child, born and raised in the heart of the Australian continent by her grandparents, meets by chance, Anna, a sea child from Flinders Island, first at Kings Canyon, in Central Australia, then at Kett's cattle station in tropical Northern Territory. Carrie is a fiercely independent girl and a passionate naturalist. After living and searching by herself in the desert surrounding Kings Creek Station, her long exploration ends with the astonishing discovery of a thought-to-be extinct marsupial. Anna, also passionate about the sea and its creatures, is far more at home in a fishing boat, and her small wild island, north of Tasmania, in Bass Strait. A tumultuous, and at times terrifying, friendship between the two girls follows, echoed in the lives of their two mothers and the secrets of their past ... the secrets and shocking events which will both separate and bind Carrie and Anna together forever..