 While possessed with a deep love of nature and animals, she is socially awkward and ostracised from the community, who regard her as an eccentric.Flashbacks to her childhood show her abuse and torment at the hands of her father, a Sydney wine merchant who married above his station and arrogantly squandered his wife’s fortune on the construction of Xanadu, the crumbling estate where Mary now lives.Her distant cousin Eustace Cleugh, who once visited Xanadu but responded to Mary’s childhood infatuation with disdain, has recently resumed financially supporting her after a long absence during the war.