Laden with trip 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 parts of the world. The problems ranged from taking astrofixes in a cloudy sky and becoming surrounded by a sea of red mud, to patching a bald spot on a pet joey. All were solved by using those two most necessary ingredients of life in the bush - ingenuity and imagination.