Gold is discovered in the Kotuku Creek. It could be too late. Restructuring has closed the post office. The petrol pumps have been pulled, the store is barely stocked, the pub is struggling. Can gold help ex-postmaster Jack Cavanagh unify the villages and the retirement condo snobs to save the last vestige of village life, the bowling club? Is gold relevant to the Reverend Woodcock's battle to untie his tongue and woo Cathy Cavanagh and repel the widow Atkins? Has former boxer-turned-publican Bert Brough got any reason to smile at his whole new raft of gold-seeking riffraff ogling his spectacular wife? The answers beg new questions provoked by drug entrepreneur Bob Rogers defending his local cash crop.This Kiwi farce rattles along at a pace literally breakneck for some characters. More disorder is visited upon this law-less backwater than Muldoon ever had a long baton shaken at. Its best chance is a born-again Grey Power initiative that could be a model for marginal rural villages monstered by Rogernomics.