In a small country town in central Gippsland, the only doctor, Don Wilson, a widower for ten years, lives alone. Deemed a trifle eccentric, but loved and respected by all living in Wallaby Creek.

Small things, like his driving a forty-five-year-old MG he had bought new, named Rocinante; that, and playing the cello in the stillness of the bush evenings, maintained the image.

It was a time when small independent communities were being swallowed up by rural growth centres or just left to wither and die. Skeletons that littered the remote countryside; picked over, bleached by the sun and forgotten.

A young woman arrives in town; well, back in town. The daughter of an unwed mother, she had been secretly supported through university and now, for reasons no one could imagine, had applied for a position with the local news-paper.

Their spirit, or stubborn determination, call it what you will, would not allow the town to die, though in the end, death comes to all.