[1] Toy's first solo journey took place almost five years before the perhaps more celebrated six-man team Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition, a London to Singapore overland trip between September 1955 and March 1956 that was also undertaken in Land Rovers.
He had reported from the Boer War in South Africa and had worked on and edited newspapers in New Zealand and in Australia, including the Wairarapa Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Bulletin (where he was literary editor) and the Australian Woman's Mirror.
[4] The family were well-read and eschewed formal education; consequently Toy was largely self-taught,[1] although she did attend Neutral Bay School in Sydney for a time.
[9] In 1945, Toy travelled to Germany and the Netherlands for ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association, to compile a report on the state of theatre in liberated Western Europe.
In her earlier years she had visited Thailand, Iceland, Europe including Yugoslavia and Greece, and Lebanon, and she had been made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of these travels.
She described the genesis of the first of many solo overland trips in a 1963 newspaper interview: "Her philosophy is that life is gloriously free and, if you really want to do anything, nothing and no one can stop you.
Once committed to the trip, she quickly got together the money to buy a demonstration (i.e. second hand) 1950 80" rag-top Series I Land Rover,[13][14] which she named Pollyanna, and organised the visas, permits and carnets required.
She crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and followed the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa, travelling through what was then French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to Cyprus, then down through Lebanon, Syria and then through Jordan to Iraq.
While in Iraq she visited several archaeological sites, including in May 1951 Sir Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud where his wife Agatha Christie was helping with processing the finds.
The 'Fool on Wheels' title was taken from a dismissive remark by a brigadier she met in Gibraltar at the start of her travels who had told her that she was mad to even think about making the journey.
It is worth noting that Toy's solo journey took place almost five years before the perhaps more celebrated six-man team Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition, a London to Singapore overland trip between September 1955 and March 1956 that was also undertaken in Land Rovers.
[23] Toy spent some time in the desert looking for bodies with Herman Schultze-Dewitz, former ADC to Field Marshal Rommel and now in charge of the German War Graves Commission unit in Cyrenaica.
[20] Prior to setting out on this journey, Toy had Pollyanna fitted with a new station wagon body to replace her soft top; the flat roof was painted white to reflect the sun's rays.
[29] She claimed to have been the first Westerner to set foot on the top of Mount Wahni in Ethiopia, known locally as Wehni Amba, which she accessed by helicopter.
One aim was to investigate the hundreds of rock drawings discovered in 1933 by a French officer in the Tassili n'Ajjer mountains in southern Algeria.
She also hoped to see if there was any evidence for the apocryphal great highway stretching from the Mediterranean to the Niger that had been supposedly driven by chariots in prehistoric times.
It was a 1950 80" soft-top Series I Land Rover, a demonstration model (i.e. second hand) bought in late 1951 from Henly's in Osnaburgh Street in London for £640,[13][28] with the registration KYH 628.
Before her second journey, to Libya some time between 1953 and 1955, Toy had Pollyanna fitted with a new station wagon body to replace her soft top, and the flat roof was painted white to reflect the sun's rays[26] In around 1960 (dates vary: some sources say 1958), after nearly a decade of service and 210,000 miles of travel, Rover pressured Toy into exchanging Pollyanna for a newer long wheel base Series II model, as the company felt she could not be seen representing the marque in an old-fashioned and battered 1950 Land Rover.
[28][32] A passage in Toy's book In Search of Sheba: Across the Sahara to Ethiopia (1961) describes her feelings on being forced to trade in her beloved Pollyanna for a newer, unwanted model—and one which she considered to be less reliable.