A super-model (Evon de Meistre) begins to question her glitzy, frenetic lifestyle when she awakes after a all night party to find a strange man (Richard Loring) in her bed. Suffering a nervous breakdown she is intent on suicide and is about to throw herself off a cliff when she sees a surfer riding the waves below. She follows him to his tented camp on the banks of a river. ‘Leatherlip’ (Tim Hughes) is a free spirit, earning a living making leather goods and roaming around on an extraordinary ‘trike’ with his worldly goods and surfboard strapped on an overhead rack. They fall in love and she abandons her previous life, entranced with his gypsy-like existence. They enjoy a blissful interlude, surfing, swimming in the river, exploring forests and lying in each others arms around the camp fire each night. Then inexplicably she disappears. Leatherlip sets off on a cross-country odyssey to find her, knowing only that her father (Bill Brewer) lives on a boat on the West Coast. He wins a drag race on his trike to finance his search and has many adventures. Crossing the Kalahari, rides through huge herds of antelope, he rescues an injured bushman (Whotsie), is fated as a hero at a Bushman camp, gets run off the road by roughnecks and gets lost in a sandstorm. Weary and dispirited by his seemingly futile quest, in a dramatic petrified forest he re-connects to the natural world and draws strength to continue. Eventually, he finds her father and is reunited with his lover.