THE SIMPSON DESERT

Australia’s Driest Desert

The Simpson Desert is famous for having the longest parallel sand dunes in the world and the highest sand dune in the Southern Hemisphere. The average height of each sand dune is between 10 – 20m high, with the highest approximately 40m which is known as “Big Red” (this will be crossed on day 14). The average length of each sand dune is 200km, which run in a parallel formation from NNE-SSW and are approximately 500m apart. 

Captain Charles Sturt was the first European to see the Simpson Desert (it was originally called the Arunta Desert) in 1845. Sturt attempted to discover whether the interior of Australia was a vast inland sea, as was believed to be at the time, and departed Adelaide with 15 men and a boat! Coming across the Eastern limit of the Simpson Desert, Sturt was unable to penetrate west into the forbidding red sand hills and described it as “a desperate region having no parallel on earth”.

The first person to run accross the Simpson Desert was Ron Grant in 1981 and his time was beaten by Pat Farmer in 1996 covering the 379km route in 3 days, 17 hours, 31 mins.  Our event will be a world first to attempt to run a 640km route from the Geogrpahic Centre of Australia to Birdsville across the full length of the Simpson Desert.