Pilot Claire Hardcastle, and her police detective boyfriend Jack Body become lost while trying to find the site of their holiday destination - Jack’s uncle Pat’s farm, where they’ll be joining the Labour Day muster, held every spring. Jack goes in search of directions on a farm that we later discover is the exclusive and upmarket Retakure Lodge. Meanwhile, Claire goes exploring in the area immediately surrounding their vehicle when she accidently wades into a swamp and stumbles across a human skeleton
She and Jack are happy to leave the problem to the police, but the next day on the muster they meet two brothers, Lee and Ray who are searching for their father Zhang, who went missing in mysterious circumstances a year earlier. When they hear Claire has discovered a body, and that her partner Jack is an off-duty detective, the brothers are quick to try and enlist their help in uncovering whether these are their father’s remains. Unexpectedly, a major earthquake strikes during the muster and all other considerations become irrelevant. Two men are injured, one seriously, and a major rockfall has dammed the river upstream. The potential for a catastrophic flood when the dam breaks is enormous.
The brothers have been staying at the same luxurious hunting lodge their father previously patronized, and the lodge helicopter flies the injured men to hospital. Claire is persuaded to join them and stay at the Lodge until Jack picks her up. Regrettably, the earthquake caused other damage in the area and a road blockage means Jack is unable reach Claire that evening. She spends the night as a guest of the Lodge and is introduced to the other resident personnel.
While studying a display of photographs depicting rich and famous visitors to the Lodge, Claire realises Zhang was a guest, and that a year earlier he’d been on the same muster. Pat had said the guests had been quarrelling. Did this relate to Zhang’s disappearance? Later, sleepless, Claire goes downstairs to borrow a book and overhears a conversation between the pilot Brett, and an unknown person. Brett says he lied and the context is clear this relates to the remains she’d found. But what had he lied about? And why? It seems the answer to the mystery of Zhang’s disappearance lies at the Lodge. An invitation from Charles, the Lodge’s owner brings all the previous day’s muster participants to the Lodge for dinner. The invitation is positioned as an opportunity to meet his neighbours and as a thanks to those who helped his guests, Lee and Ray, after the earthquake the previous day. Later, when the visitors take their leave they discover the impromptu dam jamming the river has burst, causing severe flooding and washing out the bridge, the only route out of valley, forcing them to return to the Lodge to spend the night. Frantic to return to his own farm, Pat and the others go on a recce and ascertain they can get their 4WD’s through ancient, overgrown forestry tracks. While the men drive out over the dangerous route, Claire and Pat’s wife Joanne are left behind. Brett will fly them back to the farm later.
Jack warns Claire to curb her curiosity and stay with Joanne, but responding to a request from Mary, the housekeeper, Claire is lured to a bunker where she is knocked unconscious and shut in with the decomposing remains of a corpse. Claire is terrified she will never be discovered, but Joanne and Brett find and free her. He intends to fly them to safety but an attack from Wu forces Joanne and Claire escape and seek help at a neighbouring forestry block. Unfortunately, the owner Paul intends to dispose of the women. They’re drugged and left to die of hypothermia, but Joanne and Claire manage to survive by a heroic struggle to the shelter of an aircraft hangar. They are discovered when Paul and Wenjun arrive at the hangar in the early morning. Paul forces Claire to pilot a disabled aircraft intending she and Joanne die in a convenient plane accident. Claire’s competence as a pilot ensures that against the odds they survive, and she is reunited with Jack
