Ever since he was expelled for his treatment of a classmate with a facial deformity, Julian has struggled to fit in at his new school. To transform his life, Julian's grandmother finally reveals her own story of courage of her youth in Nazi-occupied France, where a classmate shelters her from mortal danger.

Set against the badlands of Australia where the English rule with a bloody fist and the Irish endure, Ned Kelly discovers he comes from a line of Irish rebels — an uncompromising army of cross dressing bandits immortalised for terrorising their oppressors back in Ireland. Fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother, Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot one of the most audacious attacks of anarchy and rebellion the country has ever seen.