Today the annual Round Australia Trial has become an institution in that continent, and its notorious among motorists the world over for the prolonged and savage beating it inflicts on cars and competitors. The journey has always been treated as a purely sporting occasion, with no very serious or far-reaching objects beyond the advertising of the cars, petrol, oil, tires and personalities involved.

A motorcyclist circled Australia before a motorist did so - A Grady of Perth, who set out from his home in October 1924 and finished up where he started from in the spring of the following year. However, we are concerned with the first motorist to follow suit, and here we run up against a problem, because the first continuous circuit was completed after a man who had done part of the run some years earlier finished off the balance of the distance. Their priority is the sort of question which can be argued till Kingdom come, so both stories are told here. In any case, each has hits own peculiar interest.

When Noel (Neville) R Westwood and G L Davies drove out of Perth on 4 August 1925, they had no idea that they were going to motor ten thousand miles in and enormous circle. Westwood, who was only twenty-two, was a Seventh Day Adventist evangelist; his companion was a student of the same persuasion, and their object was to undertake mission work in the remote bush of the north west corner of Australia. No one less like normal works-sponsored professional record breakers could be imagined. Their car was a tiny 7h.p. Citroen two seater which already had forty thousand miles behind it.

Their route took the little car inland to Meekatharra and thence to Nullagine, Margle Bar and Condon on the coast. At Pardoo Station the missionaries entered upon the howling desolation of Madman's Track where in the gold rush days of 1887-1888 prospectors walking from the Kimberleys to the Roebourne goldfields had dide or gone out of their minds from heat stroke and exhaustion. The three hundreds and twenty miles of the track between Pardoo Station and Broome had certainly not been improved since those days. The Western Australian desert ran down into the sea at Ninety Mile Beach, where the two motorists were able to cool off.

While on Madman's Track, the Citroen's petrol tank sprang a leak in a very inaccessible place. Westwood connected up the intact reserve supply and the carburettor with a length of rubber tube, but the petrol perished it. Desperate measures were called for, so for a good many miles he drove with one finger stopping up the hole in the tank, steering with his other hand and depending on his companion for directions, for he was facing backwards or sideways and could not see where he was going. The way to Derby lay across a hundred miles of bush infested with huge anthills and dunes, heavy sand tracks and river crossings.

At Fitzroy Crossing on 3 September the Citroen was hauled over the river by a gang of Aborigines on the end of a tow rope attached to the front axle. Westwood and Davies were in no hurry, and frequently left the recognised tracks to bounce their way across deep creeks and rocky ravines to isolated stations. There they invariably met with the warmest hospitality.

At Halls Creek they stayed for no less than a fortnight. Hall's Creek was the last township they would see until they reached Camooweal, the best part of a thousand miles away, and even homesteads would now be few and far between. Then they pushed on for the Northern Territory border, Crossing on 22 September. The country became steadily rougher and the heat was increasing to tropical intensity.

The bush tracks in this region, always overrun by tall grass, often faded away entirely. At the best of times they were beset by fallen trees, stumps, anthills, and limestone outcrops, all concealed in the grass until a car was on top of them, in spite of their efforts of the lookout. The brush might be so thick that a path had to be cut through it, or the car used brutally and a battering ram against smaller trees.

Elsewhere, passengers would continually have to climb out and push fallen trees and slabs of rock out of the way. There were numerous creek beds and gullies blocking the path. Here the banks had often to be broken down with pick and shovel and cleared of scrub, and then block and tackle used to drag the car out. In these conditions an average speed of rather less than walking pace was to be expected, for if one hits a rocky outcrop an any greater speed, a tire could be torn clean off its wheel.

Sometimes an obstacle could not be broken down or flattened, and had to be circumvented. In doing so it was only too easy to lose all sense of direction and become 'bushed' - lost - and then the odds began to mount sill higher against the motorist. His water or petrol might run out with the additional mileage, or through the roughness of the going; and then unless he was very lucky indeed, he was finished. In 1923 a motor party had almost perished in this way from thirst and starvation.

Before reaching Wave Hill station there was also a sheer cliff of loose rock to be climbed: the jump-up, which marked the beginning of Barkly Tableland. After the jump-up the going became a little better, though still at first through thick bush, until this abruptly ended and the traveler emerged on to rolling open plains.

The Citroen's inner tubes were soon full of holes, so it ran for a hundred miles without them. The covers were filled with grass, and when this disintegrated to powder Westwood packed them with gum leaves. These cushioned the long-suffering car as far as Wave Hill, reached on 23 September. Obviously something more effective would have to be improvised, if only for the sake of the springs, so when the travelers heard that a bullock had just been killed, they acquired its hide and packed the covers with that. After thirty or forty miles these 'solids' began to come off and it was then found that the hide had become well and truly 'cooked' by the friction.

At Victoria River Downs, a property of thirteen thousand square miles, and said to be the largest tin the work, some repair materials were discovered, none too soon.

PART TWO