DESERT TAILS

YOU WON’T FIND AUSTRALIAN DESERT Expeditions’ scientific surveys on the Flight Centre specials board next to crazy-good deals to Ubud and the Goldie. Walking 120 kilometres through the Simpson Desert (Munga-Thirri National Park) to examine the “current status of desert flora and fauna” and document its Indigenous history is not your average flop-and-drop jaunt. The logistics of negotiating a few weeks through one of the world’s driest environments without vehicles are perplexing enough, and an impossibility without one element: camels.

But banish fanciful ideas of rides into the sunset, because not a single animal is straddled. The camels are, to put it bluntly, our beasts of burden, humping enough rations to complete the mission, which leaves only boot and toe prints in the Simpson’s red dunes. We’ll not shower (except for using wet wipes to clean our nooks), and we’ll burn and bury our No. 2s like pagans. Those are the hows; here come the whys.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

The ‘Mail Run’ from Brisbane to Birdsville bunny-hops into five tiny airports, including one I’d never heard of before. Before every take-off, the flight attendant repeats the safety spiel to essentially the same folk. ADE owner Andrew Harper greets me at Birdsville’s tin-shed airport; he reckons this teensy frontier town – population 140 – feels a “bit suburban”. Then again, Andrew once walked across the entire breadth of Australia (along the Tropic of