Alice-Miranda in the Outback

Jacqueline Harvey's Alice-Miranda in the Outback is a red-dust mystery for 9 year olds with a vanished opal miner and a cattle station whose water keeps disappearing.

What happens

It opens on Hope Springs Station, where Barnaby Lewis finds his dam nearly empty when it should be full. The rest of his team is away, mustering is about to start and he's running the place on his own. Then he spots the glint of a car in a paddock where nobody should be.

So Alice-Miranda's dad, Hugh, an old friend of Barnaby's, rounds up some help. Alice-Miranda, Millie, Jacinta and Lucas set off from Alice Springs with Hugh and her Uncle Lawrence the film star, in two four-wheel drives with their own call signs on the radio. Over!

The road trip is a hoot. Millie tells Jacinta the giant eagles are pterodactyls (and Jacinta believes her). A roadhouse owner informs Lawrence that his musical was the worst film she's ever seen. In Coober Pedy, where people live in houses dug into the hillside, they meet Sprocket McGinty.

Sprocket is wonderful. He has brand new teeth so white you have to shield your eyes, he blows up rock to build a sunroom, and he once spent a whole night picking cactus prickles out of Hugh's bare bottom. Your reader will love that story!

But Sprocket's friend Taipan Dan has vanished, along with his ute and his cat. There's "one other thing" too, and then Sprocket spots a sparkle of opal and never finishes the story. (Isn't that maddening?) Add in a strange look between the roadhouse couple when Hope Springs is mentioned, and Alice-Miranda's got plenty to puzzle over.

Millie has brought an outback guide book and reads the facts out as they go, from the dog fence to the dugouts. There's lots of Aussie talk to enjoy too ("You little ripper!"). And when Millie asks what Sorry Business is, Hugh explains it kindly and simply.

It's worth knowing there's a fair bit of outback grit. Dead kangaroos line the road, an eagle tears at one, there's a pickled snake in a jar and a trail of fresh snake tracks right under Alice-Miranda's chair. Nothing is gory, but a squeamish reader might pull a face. Most will be thrilled.

This is the nineteenth Alice-Miranda book. It's set a long way from school, so there are fewer names to juggle than usual, although the friendships have plenty of history behind them.

What to read next

If they love a trip with Millie and her facts, Alice-Miranda in Japan is the one where her grandad sends her off with a brand new guidebook for Tokyo, and a runaway girl is hiding somewhere in the city.