Ray Martin embarks on an exhilarating quest to find a mysterious Outback rock formation he spotted and photographed from an airliner 37,000 feet in the air.

He’s dubbed what appears to be a Dreamtime figure as The Running Man Rock.

Martin is joined on his odyssey by renowned landscape photographer Ken Duncan as they traverse 5000km of stunning landscapes, encountering fascinating characters and exploring the unique mysteries of this ancient and mesmerising land. When they finally reach the fabled Running Man Rock, they are joined by internationally renowned Indigenous musician William Barton, who has performed for the Queen, at Carnegie Hall and with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Midnight Oil.

The local Kalkadoon man from Mt Isa composes special music for the documentary and his didgeridoo performance at sunset on Running Man Rock is soulful, symbolic and inspirational. Martin doesn’t shy away from the dark historical side to these vast and uncompromising lands in far western Queensland bordering the Northern Territory.

He visits the notorious Hanging Tree where white stockmen and native police slaughtered dozens of First Nations people and Battle Mountain where up to 900 Kalkadoon people were killed in an encounter with settlers in 1884. But as Simpson Desert Park Ranger Don Rowlands tells him, truth-telling is finally happening.

The trip to Running Man Rock is a photographer’s dream, and an anthropologist’s delight. Martin and Duncan uncover a smorgasbord of characters, mysteries and facts about the land that, for millions of years, was an inland sea then subsequently populated by dinosaurs. Martin references Burke and Wills and pioneers, the ‘Cattle King’ Sir Sidney Kidman and RM Williams along with the customs and culture of the First Nations tribes which have been custodians for thousands of years. The team meets an Indigenous couple who train camels for racing at the “Melbourne Cup of Camel Races” in Boulia. They talk to locals still haunted by their mysterious encounters with the fabled Min Min light and come across a young grazier couple loading cattle onto road trains. Their 10-month-old son comes to ‘work” strapped in a harness to his mother as the dusty ritual unfolds. There’s a female miner and mum who works 1.2km underground and loves it and a young school principal who is adored by her primary school students at remote Dajarra.

Martin and Duncan are smitten by the amazing Big Red sand dunes near Birdsville and stunning, jagged ‘jump up’ red ridges of Cawnpore Lookout which is like a poster scene for the dinosaur eras.

The film is a kaleidoscope of colours and characters which reaches a moving conclusion when the team and special guests gather at Running Man Rock.