Tall Poplars

Leading interior designer, Sally Hampstead and prestige furniture manufacturer, Max Scarponi meet at an interstate furniture exposition. Instant attraction leads to the dapper Max being inveigled by Sally, a glamorous divorce four years his senior, into a hitherto unimaginable tryst.Max finds Sally utterly irresistible. He leaves his young family and moves with her into a luxurious harbourside apartment from where they indulge their hedonistic desires unabated. To pursue their idyll they invest in a rustic weekend cottage within a secluded valley.Their valley retreat contains intriguing aspects and soon they are drawn into the vortex of small-town life. The brazen allure of locals such as hard-living endurance rider, Luke Byrne and exotic bush regenerator, Veronica Jackson, sows seeds for lust, temptation and deception.Outside the valley, Sally retains her professional ambition while Max struggles. His now-ailing furniture factory is a burden to his finances, pride and confidence and the situation only exacerbates his guilt about his parents welfare and his forsaken family.Max and Sally open a restaurant in the valley to placate his parents but their omnipresence creates tension between the lovers. It doesnt help that Sally is frequently away on business - a situation that their part-time waitress Veronica is all too eager to exploit. As if their lives werent complicated enough, a mystery involving the enigmatic former owner of the cottage surfaces.