Dora King, a rather prim English schoolteacher, arrives in Jindi, a tiny seaside settlement on the eastern coast of Australia. She learns with horror that her predecessor drank and gave unofficial holidays and finds the ways of its mixed white and aboriginal population crude, eccentric and alarming. She decides Jindi must change and zeal tries the patience of the locals. Then comes the dolphin, swimming in from the outer ocean to become the playmate of the children and make Jindi its home. Dora realizes they possess something far more precious than the world outside can ever give them.