When, in the year of 1844, a young woman throws herself down a deserted Cornish mine shaft, the lives of three families become changed and interwoven forever. The tragedy prompts mine captain Henry Collins to take his family to South Australia, where father and sons join other Cornishmen in the great Burra Copper Mine and young Meggan Collins grows up with dreams of becoming a great singer. But the past is resurrected with the arrival of visitors from Cornwall. Impossible love, pride, and integrity struggle against vengeance, greed, violence, and murder, while the lives of a young Aboriginal girl and her white adoptive family become fatefully enmeshed with those of the Collins family,.