Ort Flack is 12 years old and lives with his mother and his sister Tegwyn in the Australian outback. The three of them also have to take care of their old grandma and their paralyzed father. It is not easy for one mother to take care of everybody. But one day a mysterious stranger, Henry, comes to their desolate house to help them...

Alice's father left when she was a child. She continued to share her life with him in letters that she sent not realising that he never received them. Eventually, they all come back with "Dead Letter Office" stamped on the front. As an adult, she becomes consumed with a desire to find him and takes a job with the Dead Letter Office, convinced that she can use them to fulfill her romantic notions of a reunion with her father. What awaits her at the DLO is far more than that ...