Enthusiastic young vet Jill Blake (Victoria Thaine) arrives in the dusty one-horse town of Paringa to find only a curt note directing her to her spartan new home. When her new boss, the notoriously "difficult" Kate McDonald (Rachel Ward), turns up, her attitude is as dry as the drought-stricken landscape...

Set to work immediately, Jill encounters many of the problems of dry-land farming in stark relief: a farmer who can cope with neither the drought nor his mounting debts; another forced off his land by the bank; and a third confronting the vexed issues of succession and future planning. Then there's the spectre of a notifiable sheep disease, the mere mention of which turns Kate's prickly attitude to open hostility.

It's clear that Kate has a stronger connection to the land and the people on it than just treating their animals. Kate tells Jill that she either accepts her way of working or she needn't bother unpacking her bags. If that weren't enough to scare Jill off, there's the mysterious locked room in Kate's house, and the light from its window in the middle of the night...