a long and arduous journey seeking riches again results from a little aside by burra's grandson 'stinky,' who provides burra with a wisp of information on the huge benefits on offer from wildlife smuggling and spoken in confidence by a friend who's father is deeply involved. with figures in his head of vast riches from trapping wildlife, burra, along with cliffy, and sons archie and arty take the gamble and join the kangaroo shooter's cult hoping to benefit from trapping endangered wildlife, but on arrival in billabrook discover trapping wildlife is only a part of a large illegal organization involved in many different fields, and they are advised to not venture into areas controlled by their arch rivals, the barramundi fishermen.
burra, cliffy, archie and arty quickly discover that those who employed them are basically only themselves on the bottom rung of a very long ladder and as they meet those higher on the hierarchy scale, the creeks are split up and forced to perform duties for the good of the kangaroo shooters cult, but not necessarily for the good of burra, his boys, and cliffy.
burra's inability to stay away from members of the opposite sex tend to lead him into temptation, but then the temptation leads him into more precarious situations that push him to the abyss on expeditions that he has been seconded to. cliffy finds a niche working in the clubhouse as a cleaner, and archie along with arty have been placed under the control of an abrupt and impatient german named adolf who is in charge of dispatch.
the creeks final act of employment is to swap a dog that burra had finally tracked down. once the swap has been made, they are free to drive home, but with all the gains made by burra, certain incidents quickly eat into any of these gains he has made after arriving home. funnily, archie, arty and cliffy do quite well out of the billabrook traps.