Civil servant Gulliver Shiels has long been bored of life in dreary, wet, dull Dublin. It may be a modern city, but it's not the life for him: for as long as he can remember, Gulliver has dreamed of emigrating to the island of Rarotonga, a tropical paradise in the South Pacific.

Exasperated by the continued lack of progress towards achieving his goal, Gulliver is intrigued when he hears tale of a fellow Dubliner who found fortune after coming to the rescue of an elderly stranger, and was rewarded with a fine sum. He resolves to take up watch at a notorious road junction in the city centre and simply wait for the next traffic accident and his chance for a new future.

Beautiful society girl Jennifer, however, has other ideas. First meeting Gulliver on a beach, where he is daydreaming of Rarotonga and not the slightest bit interested in her presence, she immediately falls for his his cool, indifferent nature, and the romantic poetry of his desire to leave for a more tropical isle. Spotting him again, at his post by the city junction, she resolves to make him hers - by any means necessary.

Needless to say, the pair's competing visions are not compatible: Gulliver isn't bothered by women or having company in the tropics; whilst Jennifer has no intention of changing her life beyond the addition of Shiels as a husband! When the latest collision at the junction leads him to make the acquaintance of the wealthy eccentric Alastair McNeil, who has a longing to return to Hawaii, where he once worked, it seems that Gulliver may just have found his lifeline at last.