Nefertiti Owens is known by many names - NTT to her friends, Vice Principal Owens to her colleagues, Aunty to her students. She is renowned amongst the faculty and greater community as level-headed and compassionate. When Nutbush High is one of seven sister schools chosen to send their football team on a goodwill tour of the South Pacific, Aunty is the obvious choice to lead the delegation. Two other Nutbush faculty members are quick to volunteer as chaperones - Ton Ton Tatsuhara, Music teacher and leader of the school band, and Elvis Ford, the diminutive Master of Science.
Along with the full contingent of thirty Nutbush Thunderbolts comes the mentally handicapped team mascot Blaster, wearing his oversized mask with its trademark black eye and Oxford boater.
The tour is doomed from the start. Petrol shortages are an ever present threat, as are protest marches and the riots that follow. A terrorist attack precipitates the team's early departure from Australia, on what would be the last flight out of Sydney before the power grid collapses nationwide. A brilliant flash of light illuminates the northern skyline and the worst turbulence Aunty has ever experienced forces the pilot, Captain Walker, to set the plane down before he's even reached cruising altitude.
The plane grinds to a halt atop the encroaching sand dunes beyond the city limits. The survivors split into two groups - Walker leads a group of women and children into the outback in search of the watering hole he claims to have spied from the air, while the other group, led by Aunty and her Thunderbolts, salvage what they can from the wreckage, including their team kit bags full of football gear. Aunty takes the lead as they begin the arduous journey back towards Sydney, with Mr Ford riding high on Blaster's shoulders.
Three blistering days into the trek, they stumble across a railway line and follow the tracks deeper into the desert. The tracks take them to a fortified farm with an onsite biogas facility, inhabited by dozens of pigs. The farm contains several working wells and a hefty supply of food for livestock. The survivors descend upon the squealing denizens of the farm. Ford, convinced that the pigs are worth more alive than dead, persuades Aunty to stop the hungry survivors and, with the help of her loyal Thunderbolts, she is able to do so. The seeds of the first law of Bartertown are planted on that day.
Aunty fashions her Thunderbolts into her own personal army, tasked with keeping the peace in their growing commune. They build Thunderdome in honour of their home field in Nutbush, Tennessee. It is a multipurpose venue, used to dispense information, settle disputes, and entertain the masses that are drawn to the lights produced by Ford in the cavernous biogas facility beneath the farm.
Buoyed by the surrogate body of Blaster and his usefulness in the new world order, Ford becomes Master. Aunty recognises Master's confidence for exactly what it is; a challenge for rule of Bartertown. She has also grown accustomed to the vaunted position the end of the world has elevated her to, and has no desire to give it up. Aunty understands that Master's knowledge is a valuable commodity, so with the help of her closest allies, she conspires to remove the brain and dump the body. All she needs is a willing and capable assassin to complete the task. One might even go so far as to say, a hero.
