Irish-Australian Paddy Carmody (Robert Mitchum) is a sheep drover and shearer, roving the sparsely populated outback with his wife Ida (Deborah Kerr) and son Sean (Michael Anderson, Jr.).

While passing through the bush, the family meet refined Englishman Rupert Venneker (Peter Ustinov) and hire him to help drive a large herd of sheep to the town of Cawndilla.

Ida convinces Paddy to take a job at a station shearing sheep; she serves as the cook, Rupert as a wool roller, and Sean as a tar boy.

When fellow shearer Bluey Brown's (John Meillon) pregnant wife Liz (Lola Brooks) arrives unannounced, she sees the young woman through her first birth.

Ida is saving the money the family earns for a down payment on a farm that they stayed at for a night on the sheep drive.

Nevertheless, Paddy's deep remorse heals the breach with Ida, and they resolve to save enough to buy a farm one day.

He was replaced by Robert Mitchum, who agreed to work on the film for a chance to appear with Deborah Kerr, with whom he had become good friends while making Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.

He also agreed to give her top billing, joking to the production team that they could "design a 24-foot sign of me bowing to her if you like".

[12] Zinnemann was determined to film The Sundowners on location and vetoed Jack L. Warner's plan to shoot in Arizona or near Dallas, Texas to save money.

And the scenes of human involvements—those between the husband and the wife, of a woman having a baby, of a footloose housewife looking at a stove—are deeply and poignantly revealing of how good and sensitive people can be.The Sundowners, marketed as a "newer version" of From Here to Eternity, was a financial failure in the United States.