At 8am on Monday, May 6, 1985, six young people, one of them 12-year-old Rachel Sukumaran from Bangalore, India, started on a walk of more than 1000 miles across one of the most empty places in the world, where houses are as much as 120 miles apart, and each night the weather drops below freezing. They had no money, no water, no food, no blankets, no tent, no radio or other way of talking to people in other parts of the world, and no helper car to follow them. "Where God Leads He Meets the Needs" was printed on the front of one of the white robes they each were wearing.

Police in Australia, where the walk happened, promised that the group would die. If freezing weather did not kill them, then they would die without food or water in the Nullarbor Desert. Church leaders across Australia argued that the trip was the work of the devil, saying that the young people were trying to force God to help them with a miracle. Friends asked them to drop their foolish plan to show that God is real to a world that was not interested.

People were most angry about the danger that little Rachel was going to face on the walk, and some tried to take her away from the group and send her back to India.

When the walkers pushed to the side all the arguments and started their walk of faith, newspaper and television companies from all over the world sent reporters to write about how these foolish young people died because of the crazy things they believed.

But day after day, with helicopters above them, and reporters taking it in turns to walk with the group as far as each reporter could walk, the young people travelled on.

At first things went surprisingly smoothly. But as they walked on across the desert, weather, food, and water problems made their trip more difficult. But by this time the group was ready, both in their bodies and in their spirits, for each new problem as it came up.

They cooked and ate kangaroos that had died beside the road, drying the skins to be used for clothes. They ate wild berries. And when they needed water, God sent rain to fill holes that had been dry for many months. At night clouds protected them from the cold as all around them rain was falling on other parts of the Nullarbor.

But most of their help came through people. They had agreed between themselves not to ask for help from anyone, but their faith was winning the hearts of thousands. Whole churches were praying for them, and a number of people believed that God was telling them to travel up to 600 miles just to bring them a meal or a blanket. The few people who lived in houses or worked selling petrol and food on the road gave them hot meals and a place to sleep when they were close enough to receive this help. Bags or boxes of food were often left for them beside the road, or hanging from a fence, put there by humble helpers.

An older man, from Townsville, Australia, travelled 2000 miles to join with them on their walk of faith.

Less than eight weeks after they started the walk, all seven people, smiling and healthy, walked into Norseman, Western Australia, two days earlier than they had planned, to mark the end of the walk.

"We are not going out into the desert to die," 15-year-old Christine McKay had said in a television interview before the walk. "We are going out into the desert to show the world that God is alive."

And that is what they did.

In the following pages we will tell a little about the group before the start of the walk, and we will give a day by day report of their feelings and actions on the walk, from their own words, in writings that each walker made in a small book that he or she was carrying on the walk.

A map at the back of this book shows where the walkers travelled from day to day, and how much of Australia they covered. The place where they walked is very empty. The word Nullarbor is another word for "without any trees". The land there is too dry for trees or to grow other plants for food. That is why no one lives there. One road joins Norseman with Port Augusta and it is the longest perfectly straight road in the world. About 20-30 cars a day used this road at the time of year when the walk was made.