The secret of the Australian desert

The narrative follows a search across the arid Australian interior undertaken to solve the disappearance of a past exploring party and to investigate reports of a perennial fire and strange ancient cave paintings. The story records long desert marches with scarce water, survival difficulties, clashes with local Indigenous groups, and violent set-pieces in caves, alongside archaeological discoveries such as marked trees, hut remains, and a reef of gold. Organized episodically, it blends adventure, field description of landscape and bushcraft, and speculative suggestions about an earlier, partly civilized population before concluding with the searchers' final departures and returns.