The film is a "documentary-drama", that is a dramatic fiction which represents a true happening in a docuentary manner. It is the adventure of two German pilots who, in 1932, tried to fly round the world in a hydroplane (Europe-Australia-Europe). Halfway along the route, within sight of the Australian coasts, their plane suddenly loses height and the two pilots are forced to make an emergency landing. Declared missing, they wander for days in desert places and unknown seas, in a desperate fight for survival, at times prey to euophoria - when they catch sight of a ship offshore, or a civil rescue plane sent to explore the coasts - and at others to desperation, when it seems no one will come to save them. In the end a tribe of Aboriginal fishermen find them and rescue them from death. This odyssey of two German pilots (narrated also with the support of film of that time) is interwoven with the relationship between the Australian authorities and the Aborigines, a group falsely accused of having captured and killed the two pilots.