ADE founder Andrew Harper OAM explains how Australian Desert Expeditions was born:

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"The winter of 2005 marked 10 years of my walking the Australian deserts, and in that year we were conducting commercial expeditions in the vast Great Sandy and Gibson Deserts of Western Australia.

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Though always mindful of the great desert scientific expeditions of the 19th Century, it was during the

30-day Gibson Desert Expedition that I began to realise that our deserts were now more empty of human habitation than they had been since humans first arrived in Australia approximately 60,000 years ago.

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And added to that, no one walked the remote desert anymore: I realised that our camel team was the last living link to true desert exploration. It was clear to me that if we were going to spend the considerable time, effort and resources to mount these expeditions, then we should be getting as much out of the endeavour as possible. We should be liaising fully with our First Nations people,

and taking the leading desert experts with us and studying, documenting and interpreting all that we see.

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So Australian Desert Expeditions was born, initially trialling expeditions over a 3 year period - one in 2007 and 2008, then two expeditions in 2009. In 2010 and 2011 we conducted 7 surveys in each year, then in 2014 switched entirely to a full winter trekking season of scientific & ecological surveys.

Since the severe financial ramifications of the covid inspired border closures in 2020-22, we are currently operating a reduced number of surveys and sharing the trekking season under the new banner of

Great Desert Walks

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Even in this day of 4WD travelling, the best way to see the deserts is to walk them. With the demise of the stockman and his horse, and the Aboriginal leaving of the Simpson and Western Deserts in the early 1900s,

very few people walk the remote desert anymore, let alone on major walking expeditions like these.

Consequently, the stories the desert holds have been missed over the last few decades.

The desert deserves to be approached gently, so its mood is revealed.

The way people have always approached this landscape was on foot, as we continue to do so today.

This reveals the country - the continuum of country."