Laden with trig poles, theodolites and porridge, Beadell and his team built roads, laid out town sites and undertook an enormous survey programme in order to prepare a test launching area in one of the most isolated places in the world. Their problems ranged from trying to take an astrofix in a cloudy sky, being surrounded buy a sea of red mud to patching a bald spot on a joey. All were solved by using the two most necessary ingredients of bush life - an imagination and ingenuity.