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.