Tambourine Mountain, Australia, 1929. Vivien is being punished for punching an older boy who had been bullying a friend of hers, so she has to stay home while her family attends a summer picnic. Bored, Vivien, who is eight years old, pokes through the house, then goes down to the creek. When she stares into the water, she is able to see lights at the bottom, and she imagines they are shining from another part of the world. Vivien wakes beneath a bush when her aunt calls, coming to inform Vivien that her entire family has been killed in a car crash. Vivien imagines that the lights she saw at the bottom of the creek bed were indications that she might find her family in the center of the earth, or on the other side of it.

Aunt Ada takes Vivien to her home, but she has other children and finds it difficult to take care of Vivien. She decides to send Vivien to a maternal uncle in England.

London, March 1941. Vivien runs into Jimmy on the street and he reminds her that they’ve met before. He says Vivien told him about the children’s hospital, and he wants to visit Nella, the orphan.