In the tough world of Queensland sugar mills, it's not only cane that is crushed ...
In 1881 'Big Jim' Durham ruthlessly creates for Elianne Desmarais, his young French wife, the finest of the great sugar mills of the Southern Queensland cane fields, and names it in her honour.
The massive estate becomes a self-sufficient fortress and home to hundreds of workers, but 'Elianne' and the Durham Family, have dark and distant secrets; secrets that surface in the wildest of times, the 1960s.
For Kate Durham and her brothers Neil and Alan, freedom is the catchword of the decade. Rock 'n' roll, the Pill, the Vietnam War, the rise of Feminism, Asian immigration and the Freedom Ride join forces to rattle the chains of traditional values.
The workers leave the great sugar estates as mechanisation lessens the need for labour - and the Durham family, its secrets exposed, begins its fall from grace...
