The story begins in the small whaling town of Angelus, Western Australia in the early 1980s, right after the narrator and his friend Biggie Botson have graduated from high school. Most of the people from their class have gone on to college, but the two boys are working at a meat-packing plant and saving up for a car. The narrator is sick of waiting and wants to escape Angelus, so he convinces Biggie to buy a kombi (a VW van). They drive east together, intending to make it past Perth before letting anyone know they’re gone.

The narrator has failed his exams and is upset that he won’t be attending university. Biggie failed too, but he is content with his station in life, which is a point of frustration between the narrator and his mother: she thinks Biggie is holding her son back, and the narrator’s visions of the future don’t include Biggie in them, even though Biggie has been the narrator’s best friend ever since Biggie saved him from Tony Macoli, a bully who wouldn’t leave him alone. Since then, the narrator has tried to help Biggie do better in school, to his own detriment. Now, though, Biggie has become a burden, particularly when it comes to the narrator’s relationships with women.