The road conditions might have improved over the years, but the 32,000 kilometre overland journey from Oxford, England, to Singapore is still recognised as an epic challenge.
Two Queenslanders next month will lead a group of students on the journey, retracing the footsteps and tyre tracks of those who first conquered the distance.
In 1955, the six-man First Overland crew drove two Land Rovers from London to Singapore across 20,000 miles of harsh terrain, encountering exotic cultures and places rarely glimpsed by man and capturing them on a relatively new medium, colour film.
Dan Nicolau, who gained his undergraduate and honours degree in computational biology at the University of Queensland (UQ), will lead the group. Behind the camera is Drew Sonne, who is finishing a German and IT degree at UQ.
For Nicolau, 26, the trip will be the realisation of a childhood dream.
His parents had a map of the world on the bathroom door, but a small Dan Nicolau could only see the section spanning Lisbon to Vladivostok and vowed to travel across that distance one day.
When he studied at Oxford, fresh from hitch-hiking from London to Morocco, Mr Nicolau heard about the First Overland" journey.
After he started work on FEE, he received more than 200 applications and on a trip back to Australia, he convinced Mr Sonne, his former flat-mate, to film the trip.
"I had edited Dan's last trip (to Morocco) and I offered to do the same this time," Mr Sonne said,
"But Dan said 'why don't you film it too' and I said yes without a second thought."
Mr Sonne said that, in an age of packages tours and internet travelogues, he hoped the trip, and the film, would open people's eyes to the world around them.
He said a Welsh production company had expressed interest in the documentary
Mr Sonne said the group's route would vary slightly from the 1955 trip, avoiding hot spots such as Iraq and Pakistan, but still going to Burma and Iran.
The trip is expected to take three months, less than half the duration of the original 1955 journey.
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