Outbound tells the tale of an anthropologist working among traditional Aboriginal people of the Australian Central Desert, when a strange white boy calling himself Obi-wan Kenobi after the Star Wars character arrives suddenly in a truck with a dead body in the back. The first task is to find out who he is, then return him to his family in Melbourne. Things are not quite what they seem, however. The boy, from a wealthy and powerful family, is extremely precocious but had been abused and neglected and has formed his own view of the world. He is not to be deterred. After he runs away he ties up with a gold and gem miner, a loner working out in the desert who is bitten by a snake and dies. He leaves a small fortune in gold, sapphires and opals which they take back to Melbourne to be made up into high fashion presentation jewelry. The miner’s ex-partners have other plans, or think they have. When they abduct the boy in an effort to retrieve the hoard of gems a chase across half Australia finds them back among the Aboriginal community, where traditional justice is meted out.