Left behind by her friends on a boat trip, contemporary teen Mabel takes pursuit but is knocked unconscious on an island, where she has a dream involving pirates, sisters, a modern major-general, romance, and adventure.

The eponymous Dusty is an appropriately named dingo, or wild dog. Roaming the fertile fields of Australia, Dusty is captured as a puppy. Though dingoes are normally averse to human companionship, Dusty attaches himself to an old, worn-out shepherd, played by Bill Kerr. The dog gives Kerr a reason for living, and vice versa. Be sure to have plenty of Kleenex handy for some of the mistier passages of Dusty.

Toss lives on a sheep farm with her father in New Zealand. When Toss's father dies in an accident, Ethan, an itinerant hunter, wanders onto the family farm and is given a job by her grandfather. Toss's fairly innocent relationship with Ethan is severed when he forms a relationship with her mother.

The crooks in London know how it works. No one carries guns and no one resists the police. Then a new gang appears that go one better. They dress as police and steal from the crooks. This upset's the natural order of the police/criminal relationship and the police and the crooks join forces to catch the IPOs (Impersonating Police Officers), including an armored car robbery in which the police must help the gangs to set a trap.

An eccentric marketing guru visits a Coca-Cola subsidiary in Australia to try and increase market penetration. He finds zero penetration in a valley owned by an old man who makes his own soft drinks, and visits the valley to see why. After "the Kid's" persistence is tested he's given a tour of the man's plant, and they begin talking of a joint venture. Things get more complicated when the Coca-Cola man begins falling in love with his temporary secretary, who seems to have connections to the valley.

Australian journalist Guy Hamilton travels to Indonesia to cover civil strife in 1965. There—on the eve of an attempted coup—he befriends a Chinese Australian photographer with a deep connection to and vast knowledge of the Indonesian people, and also falls in love with a British national.

As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.