Trent and Dylan Steadman are typical big city kids, so when their mother packs them off to a small town to live with their father, life threatens to become pretty grim. Sure enough  things are a hundred times worse than even they imagined and the local kids seem even fiercer than the unfamiliar wildlife. When Trent believes an old pearler who tells him the mystery of the Ocean Star, a priceless cluster of pearls he claims he lost when his pearling lugger was sunk in a cyclone forty years before, the locals give him a hard time. But Trent's persistence eventually wins them over and together the kids embark on a quest that takes them through the untamed paradise that is the outback, a quest that will turn out to be more exciting, difficult and dangerous than any of them ever anticipated.