Book excerpt: Alice-Miranda and her friends are off to the Australian outback! They're going to help an old family friend who's found himself short staffed during cattle mustering season. The landscape is like nothing else - wide open and dusty red as far as the eye can see. It's also full of quirky characters, like eccentric opal miner Sprocket McGinty and the enigmatic Taipan Dan. As the gang settles in at Hope Springs Station, mysteries start piling up. A strange map indicates treasure beneath the paddocks, a young girl is missing and there are unexplained water shortages. Can Alice-Miranda get to the bottom of this desert dilemma?