Pelicans travel thousands of kilometres across the Australian outback to reach isolated inland lakes that only fill after rare heavy rain. The film follows these seasonal treks to what it calls the ghost lakes of the arid centre, where the birds gather in large numbers to breed on ground that was dry desert not long before. The pelican's enormous beak and awkward walk on land give way to a different animal in the air and on the water, an efficient traveler built for long-distance flight and cooperative fishing. The central drama is a race against evaporation: parents must hatch and raise their chicks to flying age before the lake dries out under the outback heat. Some broods make it in time; for many others, the water disappears first and the chicks do not survive. The footage stays with these temporary lake colonies through the full cycle, from the birds' arrival to the shrinking shoreline that decides which nests succeed.