A man and his 8yr old daughter Tracy are in a car crash and Tracy wanders off. A woman reports to Jack that she has met the girl but Jack doesn't believe her as there is no evidence of a child having been in the car, and the woman has been reporting a child crying in the bush for years since her own 8yr old daughter Laura died. When Tracy's father regains conciousness and asks for Tracy Jack is distraught as he blames himself for Laura's death. Chris comforts Jack and later the girl is found safe.

There's a bad drought in the neighbourhood, making everybody in a bad mood. Vic has to go to Broken Hill to get more beer, but Lucy, who will look after the pub, falls ill. Marty offers to help, but leaves the pub unattended. When he comes back, Paula has taken over, making him a bit upset. They decide to help, but everything gets out of hand, and the pub is totally wrecked. Emma is angry with Marty, for helping out at the pub instead of the garage and he fires him. When Vic gets back, he doesn't get too upset about the brawl, and he convinces Emma to give Marty his job back. In the end, the drought is broken and it starts to rain!

A rich man called Barry Ryan comes to town. He is out with some horses when Luke, who is nearby, hears a shot. Barry has been shot and is taken to hospital. But Jack has a problem, it seem no one was out there except Barry - and Luke. Jack finds out Luke once killed a cop, and puts him in jail. Finally it turns out Barry was trying to kill himself, and Jack and Luke are friends again.

A girl named Kathy complains of stomachpains and Chris does some tests. Kathy's father shows up secretly and he and Kathy leaves during the night. The tests show Kathy is a diabetic and Chris and Dougie tries to track her down. They succeed eventually but Kathy is in a coma. She is taken to hospital and will be fine. And her dad sets things straight with her mum.

On the way to a clinic run some medical things fall off the truck and gets left behind. David returns to the hospital with some patients, only Geoff, Kate and Emma left at place. Geoff becomes ill, it's his appendix and it needs to be operated on, he is in an aborginal cave, Kate has to do the operation in the cave with instructions from Tom at the base. David is in a helicopter on the way back there. Kate manages to do it and Geoff is alright.

Two girls, Kelly and Hannah, and their grandmother have a car accident. In hospital Geoff finds out the grandmother has lethal cancer. She wants to looks for the girls' father, Michael O'Connor, their mother is dead. Geoff locates Michael on the opal-fields, but Michael won't come back. The grandmother dies, and the girls overhear Geoff when he says they might be split up. The girls run away and a search-party is organized. Geoff has found out why Michael won't come back for his kids, and confronts him with the information. This makes Michael come and look for his girls and thanks to him they are found!

David and Annie go to a remote part of town to do check ups on pupils at the school. One of the boys keeps acting strangly and has bad headaches and his hands keep shaking, his sister is having headaches aswell. The other kids tease him and think he is mad. David tries talking to his father but gets no joy from him, so he goes to see the boy's grandfather. He has got the shakes aswell and says it's miners shake, David finds out from him that stuff from the mines has been leaking into a stream, but then they find out it is getting into water where the boy's father is getting water from to water the vegetables with, so it turns out the boy is being poisoned.

Penny and Steve are looking forward to going on a camping trip but things take an unpleasant turn after they see something shocking. Penny runs off to Melbourne.