Emily lives with her family - Mama, Papa, little brother James and Baby Ann - on a small farm in rural New South Wales. In 1886, after a terrible flood, and with Papa working as a teamster far from home, the children and Mama are stranded, with scarcely anything left to eat. After the floodwaters have subsided, they pack up some personal belongings and the remaining scraps of food and set off on an epic walk to the nearest town - through swarms of sandflies, past animals drowned in the flood, on and on through the sticky, black mud.