1974 and the Palmer River Goldfield is roaring. Chinese miners flood in, indentured laborers, working for a tong, panning gold to honor a family debt. Their gold will go home to China.
Young Fou Yei, a pretty, Eurasian girl, is in the service of brothel owner Miss Kate, that is until George Colley steps in and buys her bond.
Fou Yei belongs to George until she can repay the debt, and an uneasy relationship develops between the pair.
Together they mine George's successful claim on the Palmer until they are drawn into the politics of Chinese/ European tensions.
Fou Yei intervenes when a tong leader is being brutalized by a European miner. George intervenes but is knocked unconscious in the struggle and loses contact with Fou Yei.
He finds her in a Joss House where Chinese miners have taken the injured tong leader. George saves the man but wants no part of the Chinese community.
The brutality of the attack adds to George's determination to turn his back on the Palmer rush and to seek the source of its gold and keep that discovery secret.
Fou Yei and George begin a search which takes them to a spot sacred to the local aboriginal people. George discovers the reef, the source of the gold and collets ore samples. he is confronted by three warriors, who kill him.
Fou Yei flees, finds her way back to the diggings and is cared for by the Chinese community. There she has George's baby and eventually returns to China a wealthy woman.
One hundred and twenty years later, Chinese gold returns to Australia with the fabulously wealthy Ophelia Lau.
She vows to have the stories of Chinese humiliation on the goldfield, like that of Fou Yei, erased from the history books.
In modern Australia, Chinese money talks, and Ophelia sets out to find willing Australian allies.
