Based on a true story, this drama is set in a ramshackle Australian seaside boarding house inhabited by a disparate group of social misfits and centers on the attempts of its newest residents, a troubled New Zealander and her 5-year-old daughter, to begin a new life. Before moving into Terra Nova, Ruth (Jeanette Cronin) and her daughter Tuesday (Eloise Etherington) lived with her parents. Ruth has psychological problems, but their exact nature and scope remain undefined in the film. The idiosyncratic Margie (Angela Punch McGregor) runs the rooming house. Ruth's fellow tenants include neo-Nazi skinhead Warren (Teo Gerbert); Dud (Trent Atkinson, who becomes friends with Tuesday; Rob, an astrologer; and Dud's strange older brother Simon (Paul Kelman), who is Margie's sometime lover.