Hypochondriac Hermann Ladner is invited on a Mediterranean cruise by his late wife's brother, Heinz Wucher. However, Heinz gambles away the money for the tickets and Hermann sets off for Italy in his caravan. Heinz, meanwhile, has sneaked into the caravan and travels along as a blind passenger.
Set against the backdrop of a 1960s jungle seaport in tropical Australia and the rich concert halls of wintry Vienna, talented eighteen year old pianist Paul Crabbe moves to an exotic outpost of far Northern Australia. There, he is forced to study under the only piano teacher his father can find – the eccentric, enigmatic Herr Keller, a Viennese refugee with a shadowed past. Living above a dilapidated hotel in the dripping heat of this seaport, Keller is known to the locals as 'Maestro', a broken, elegant drunkard. But who is he? Does he come from a lineage of great European pianists, or is he a fraud?
