Pobby and Dingan

ASHMOL "Because they are all just fruit-loops who don't know what it is to believe in something which is hard to see... or to keep looking for something which is totally hard to find"POBBY and DINGAN are invisible: you don't have to see them to believe in them. They live in a harsh wilderness, the opal capital of the world and are friends with KELLYANNE (Sapphire Boyce). This is a simple tale of the bizarre and inexplicable disappearance of Pobby and Dingan, Kellyanne's imaginary friends. ASHMOL (Christian Byers), Kellyanne's rascal of an older brother, thinks his sister should grow up and stop being such a "fruit loop". He and their father, REX (Vince Colosimo), a miner fired by dreams of getting rich quick, are obsessed with finding opal - although Rex has yet to find any on their own claim. Constantly occupied in his search for Opal, Rex and his wife, ANNIE (Jacqueline McKenzie), have only the vaguest idea of how lonely and fragile their daughter is. One morning Rex offers to take Pobby and Dingan to the mine to ensure that Kellyanne attends a party without her constant imaginary companions. Much to her alarm, when her father returns home, he is alone. It has never bothered Kellyanne before that Pobby and Dingan are invisible - but now they have disappeared. Kellyanne insists on a search party. In desperation Rex scouts around a neighbour's mine and is subsequently arrested and charged for "ratting" (stealing opal). Kellyanne is so distressed by Pobby and Dingan's absence that she develops a mysterious illness which stirs even Ashmol into wanting to help her. Ashmol has always been exasperated at the idea of his sister's imaginary friends but now in an act of uncharacteristic brotherly love he strives to recruit the local community to find these "missing persons". Sadly, this hardened community offers no help. He begins the search by flyposting "missing" posters with their description - Dingan has a lovely opal in her bellybutton (only you have to be a certain kind of person to see it) and Pobby has a limp because his right leg is wooden. As Kellyanne, grief-stricken, begins to fade away, Ashmol realises that he, too, needs to believe in Pobby and Dingan in order to find them and only then will he be able to save his sister and redeem his father's reputation. This journey becomes a rites of passage, not only for him, but also for the whole town. Together they discover that you don't always need to see to believe.