Jewel thieves Dave and Frog plant a stolen opal necklace in the luggage of Barbara, a bush nurse.
They follow her to Marree in an attempt to retrieve the jewellery, then towards Birdsville on a mail truck, similar to that operated by the real-life Tom Kruse, which they hijack,[2] by threatening the nurse and Johnny's off-sider Ivan.
[6] Albert Moran praised the film for its "drive, pace and nervous involvement" as displayed by such American directors as Raoul Walsh or Nicholas Ray.
"[8] Suzanne Borlase of the Sydney Morning Herald praised the mini-series saying it "is a gripping action-packed drama set in the vast emptiness of the Australian Outback.
[9] Also commenting on the 1990 repeat, Paul Leadon of the Sydney Morning Herald gave it a bad review writing that "Johnny and Frog were a pair of incompetent outback psychopaths in search of a better mini-series script.