Mel is transferred from a juvenile to an adult jail and is taken under the wing of Mark, Australia's most hated criminal, and Warren, a soon-to-be-paroled inmate. The parental love triangle that forms between them becomes their doom.
In a Sydney suburb, two nurses, Maria and Flora, a housekeeper, Lotte, and a solicitor, Arnold, attend to Elizabeth Hunter as her expatriate son Sir Basil, a famous but struggling actor in London, and daughter Dorothy, a divorced and down at heel princess, convene at her deathbed. They come to make sure they can leave Australia with their hefty inheritance.