Harry announces his unexpected plan. Filled with righteous anger and supported by his mother Kitty, Noel decides to expand the family’s operations, without his father’s knowledge. This leads to conflict with the DC Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, the family’s drug customers on the mainland. When things get out of hand, Harry is forced to take charge.
A PNG Raskol dies when Noel’s failed meth lab explodes. Intent on revenge, the dead Raskol’s brother goes to the family’s home on Zey Island. Rattled, Gary flees to Cairns. Harry, Marou and Noel go to PNG to square things with the Raskols and Quay Lin, the expat Chinese trader who works with them. Sissi, under the terms of Harry’s succession plan, starts work with the family’s accountant Paddy, one of Harry’s oldest friends. In the process, she stumbles on evidence that all is not above board with Paddy. Marou’s wife Lola believes that Marou, not Noel, should lead the business. She puts in place a plan to secure Marou as future head of the business.
Vlad, a hired killer, sets out for Cairns with a high-powered rifle. Harry is his target, but who has hired Vlad? Having wrestled with her discovery of Paddy’s operations, Sissi finally tells Harry what she has learned. Harry is deeply upset by the news. He takes Paddy on their weekly fishing expedition to confront him. When Sissi learns what has happened on the boat, she has an almighty fight with her father. Gary, who has been bitten by a snake on Zey and believes he’s going to die, makes a confession to his father. Harry threatens death to the participant in Gary’s confession. Before he has time to follow up on this, however, Vlad makes a move.
Harry lies comatose while his sons go on the hunt for his attacker. Sissi, still traumatised by Harry’s boat trip with Paddy, can’t bring herself to be part of the family’s bedside vigil for her father. She finds a large sum of money hidden inside Paddy’s house and is about to leave Cairns but is prevented from doing so by a corrupt cop on the Montebellos’ payroll. Noel, Marou and Gary run Vlad to ground, pursue him and discover he has bikie connections. Noel decides to take revenge on the DCs.
Police attention follows Noel’s revenge on the DC bikies and Noel’s siblings are angry with him. Noel decides to import some sex workers, even though Harry has said no to this trade in the past. Noel bullies Sissi into releasing the funds and orders Gary to do the pickup in the islands. When Gary sees the women are underage, he faces a moral dilemma. For the first time Marou believes he would make the better leader and Lola is thrilled. Trying to find an alternative approach to Noel’s “crash or crash through” style, Marou organises to meet secretly with the DC bikies with unexpected results. In hospital, Harry opens his eyes.
Marou’s life is on the line and the family desperately work to save him. Meanwhile Sissi is alarmed to encounter Paddy’s nephew, the backpacking Thomson, who has come looking for his relative. Lola plays the dutiful daughter-in-law to the recovering Harry, who appears not to remember that he hates her. The family then discovers that the price for saving Marou is a huge sacrifice by Noel. Harry is not happy.
Fresh out of hospital, Harry reasserts his authority. Sissi is falling for Thomson and gets him a job exterminating cane toads at the wildlife farm. Marou is still feeling deeply wounded by Harry’s regard for him. In an effort to earn his father’s respect, he organises a way to restore the family’s desperate cashflow. At home, Kitty learns things about her husband she’d rather not know.
Kitty arrives on Zey Island to find that Gary has become involved with Bridget, a sixteen year-old local girl. Gary tells his mother that Bridget is a source of information which leads to their overthrow of a competing drug importation racket. Back in Cairns, Harry tries to win Kitty back with tough consequences for Noel. Lola realises that Harry remembers things she hoped he’d forgotten and comes to beg his forgiveness.
Noel is on the run – from both the police and the DCs. He makes a clandestine visit to his estranged wife, Antoinette, telling her he’s going to South America. To Noel’s delight, Antoinette says that she wants to join him there, with the kids. Noel then heads north to the islands, planning to raise enough money to be able to live overseas with his family. Kitty takes Bridget out to a remote island to dig up a stash of drugs with which she plans to bankroll Noel. But when those drugs (and their boat) are stolen, Kitty and Bridget are left stranded. Marou announces he’s going north to Zey but he conceals the reason for his trip.
Harry arrives in the Straits to find that Kitty and Noel have arranged a dangerous appointment and that his two younger sons are facing their own existential crises. Back in Cairns, Sissi prepares to flee with Thomson.
