A comedy-drama set in the melting hot suburbs of Australia in the mid-1990s. Rhys is a neurotic teenager with an over-active imagination and a bizarre dirty secret under his bed. He falls in love with Iris – the nastiest, coolest girl at school – who is a guitar goddess, has a pet tarantula, and is totally out of his league. His world gets even weirder when his parents separate and his mum decides to emigrate to the UK.
Convinced his human rights are being attacked, Rhys makes a plea to the government for help, which only makes his mother tighten her clasp. He becomes increasingly alienated as he reinvents himself as a grunge rocker to impress Iris, stealing marijuana from his hippy dad to pay for guitar lessons. However, the only thing that comes naturally to Rhys is disaster and everything goes balls up. Running out of options, he hijacks his family’s demountable house and drives it into the desert. But even in the most vast, barren environment on the planet Rhys cannot outrun his mother.