Bush Christmas

After getting out of school for the Christmas holiday, five children -- ranch kids Helen (Helen Grieve), John, and Snow Thompson, a bookish English boy named Michael who is staying with the Thompsons, and an Aborigine boy named Neza whose father works on the ranch -- living in a small Australian outback town venture off where they shouldn't and come across a pair of horse thieves who are covering over the white spots on a horse with paint. The children don't put two and two together until the next morning when two of the horses on the ranch have been stolen. When Mr. Thompson finds out and then learns that the children ventured where they shouldn't have, he threatens to cancel Christmas altogether, and it's up to the children to sneak away from the ranch, pursue the horse thieves -- even as they realize they're lost in the bush -- and outwit them until the authorities can manage to track them down.