The Bates family's lives were moulded to the harsh conditions of the Australian outback. Their lives were wholly concerned with droving sheep or cattle, often for hundreds of miles from property to property or to railway trucking yards. They were without roots, but they lived and thought for each other, and for the animals who formed so important a part of their lives. But when the drought struck, there was no droving to be done and the Bates family had just one aim, to try to save their own animals, for on them their livelihood depended.