Crossing the Dead Heart

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This book is a classic narrative of modern exploration, a story of adventure, enterprise and patient scientific exploration, illustrated by photographs taken on the expedition. The Simpson is a sand-ridge desert extending 200 miles (322 km) west to east, the ridges running parallel from north to south at roughly quarter-mile (0.4 km) intervals, some reaching as high as 100 feet (30 m). Madigan planned a ground crossing in the winter of 1939. A party of nine, including a biologist, a botanist, a photographer and a radio operator, with nineteen camels, made the exhausting crossing from Andado station in the Northern Territory to Birdsville in twenty-five days. It verified Madigan's previous conclusions that the area was a wasteland. This last classic Australian exploration adventure pioneered the use of mobile radio communication, national broadcasts were made through the Australian Broadcasting Commission from desert camps. The scientific results were published and also a popular accound, Crossing the Dead Heart (Melbourne, 1946). He saw the 'Dead Heart' as a land of everlasting sand-ridges and salt-encrusted clay-pans, while his conclusions seemed correct then, within twenty years the area was criss-crossed by petroleum explorers. - Australian Dictionary of Biography