Crow Country

Thirteen-year-old Sadie Hazzard resents her mother, Ellie, a nurse, for uprooting them from Melbourne to the small rural town of Boort in the Australian countryside. Walking alone one afternoon, Sadie follows a track to Lake Invergarry, a dried-up lake on the local Mortlock family's property. On the cracked lake bed, she discovers ruins, a small graveyard of fallen wooden crosses, and a circle of nine tall boulders coated in silt. She scrapes each stone clean, revealing warm red rock carved with ancient markings. A crow appears and speaks to her in words she can understand, declaring this "Crow's place" and telling Sadie that Crow has work for her.

In town, Sadie notices her surname on the war memorial and learns that her great-grandfather, Clarry Hazzard, fought in World War I and ran the local shop. At a football match, Ellie introduces Sadie to Craig Mortlock, president of the football club and owner of the Invergarry property, and his teenage son, Lachie, who catches Sadie's eye. Ellie reconnects with David Webster, an Aboriginal social worker and former boyfriend. She encourages Sadie to befriend David's nephew, Walter, a quiet Aboriginal boy sent from Mildura after getting into trouble. Sadie and Walter bond over their shared displacement.

Sadie returns to the stone circle, where the crow declares it a sacred story place whose ending Sadie must finish. The crow unleashes a terrifying darkness, transporting Sadie back to 1933 and into the body of her great-aunt, also named Sadie Hazzard. In the family shop, she witnesses a late-night visit from Jimmy Raven, the Mortlocks' Aboriginal stockman and Clarry's wartime friend, who pleads that Gerald Mortlock's plan to dam the valley will destroy a sacred place. Gerald interrupts before Jimmy can make Clarry understand. The encounter reveals the town's racial hierarchy: Clarry treats Jimmy as an equal, yet even he cannot grasp what Jimmy is trying to protect.

Social tensions escalate when Ellie, David, Sadie, and Walter visit the pub and are met with hostile stares and a racial slur directed at Walter. Ellie confides that she once dated Craig, and when she left him for David years ago, Craig and others beat David nearly to the point of drowning. She admits she ran rather than standing by David and is determined not to repeat that mistake. A crow, furious Sadie showed Lachie the stone circle, declares that the Law, the sacred Aboriginal code governing the land, has been broken: A killing must be punished and stolen things returned.

Over dinner, Walter explains the Dreaming, the Aboriginal understanding of creation in which ancestral spirits such as Bunjil the Eaglehawk and Waa the Crow shaped and still inhabit the land. After Boort wins a football match under David's coaching, Craig mentions finding Aboriginal artifacts on his property and asks about their monetary value. Sadie realizes he means the carved stones and confronts Lachie for revealing the circle to his father, but Lachie dismisses her, asserting the land belongs to his family.

Sadie is pulled violently back to 1933 while inside the local supermarket. Gerald Mortlock staggers into the Hazzards' shop covered in blood and confesses that he has killed Jimmy Raven near the stone circle. Clarry explains that he owes Mortlock money and the family would be ruined without him, then leaves to bury Jimmy's body, asking Sadie to tend to the murderer. Sadie washes the blood from Mortlock's hands and gives him clean clothes, sickened but trapped in the role of Clarry's obedient daughter.

At the Boort cemetery, Sadie finds the graves of Gerald Mortlock, Clarry Hazzard, and Sarah Louise "Sadie" Hazzard (1920–1934, "Tragically Taken"), all of whom died within a year of the murder. She interprets this as Crow's punishment. She confides in Walter, who reveals he dreamed of a girl who talks to crows before meeting Sadie, as Auntie Lily, an Aboriginal elder in Boort, had predicted. They visit Auntie Lily, who confirms her uncle was a clever man, a person with special spiritual powers, killed long ago. She identifies him as Jimmy Raven and instructs them to find his sacred bundle and return it unopened so she can pass it to the right custodian.

When Craig and Lachie desecrate the stone circle with trail bikes and beer cans, Sadie publicly accuses Craig's grandfather of murder. Craig orders them off his land. Sadie calls silently to the crows, and hundreds descend in a churning mass over the circle, forcing the men back, though Craig's companions begin shooting the birds.

Sadie and Walter break into the Mortlock homestead while the family is at football, searching for Jimmy's sacred objects. In a glass cabinet they find Gerald Mortlock's belongings alongside a pile of bones. Lachie catches them and gives chase on his trail bike. The crows guide Sadie and Walter to the stone circle, but Lachie drives at the stones and Walter throws a clod of mud that knocks him from the bike. Lachie hits his head on a rock. As Sadie cradles his bleeding head, the parallel to Jimmy's death strikes her. Walter panics, terrified of being blamed, but Sadie refuses to repeat the cycle of cover-up.

The crisis triggers Sadie's final journey to 1933. After Clarry returns from burying Jimmy and Mortlock leaves, Sadie empties Clarry's pockets and discovers a small bundle wrapped in possum fur: Jimmy's sacred objects, pressed into Clarry's hands as Jimmy died. A voice inside the other Sadie urges her to burn them, but Sadie overrides the impulse. She places the bundle in an empty cigarette tin, follows a crow's call through the bush to a young gum sapling, and buries the tin at its base, carving an S into the bark.

Sadie wakes in the present beside Lachie and sends Walter for help. Lachie's injuries prove serious but not life-threatening. Walter confesses to David about the break-in and the accident, and David says they will face the consequences together. Sadie follows a crow to the old gum tree in her backyard, recognizing it as the sapling she buried the tin beneath in 1933. She digs up the rusted but intact tin and delivers it to Auntie Lily, who promises to pass it to the right person.

Days later, Sadie, Walter, and Lachie gather at the dry lake to mark Jimmy Raven's grave. Sadie paints a marker reading "Jimmy Raven, A Clever Man" with the date 1933 and a black feather beneath the words. Lachie, bandaged but reconciled, gives permission for the grave on his family's land. The three restore the scattered crosses and discuss plans to return Jimmy's remains to his homeland by the sea.

Sadie discovers that her actions in the past have altered the present. The other Sadie's gravestone has vanished from the cemetery, and Ellie reveals that Great-Aunt Sadie lived to 83 and traveled the world. Sadie's own name, she learns, was chosen not because she was born on a Saturday but because she was named after this remarkable great-aunt. She tries to ask a crow whether Waa changed history, but she can no longer understand its words. The crow flies into the wide blue sky, its distant laughter a reminder that this is Crow's country, and Waa is not going anywhere.