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Whatsapp Andrew Harper from Australian Desert Expeditions

Ecologically speaking, we know very little about central Australia. Andrew Harper, a ‘desert walker’ and conservationist is hoping to change that, and is gathering data on his long walks through the Simpson Desert with scientists and eco-tourists. Ann Jones met him on a break from wandering the dunes.

Andrew Harper’s business card says that he’s a ‘desert walker’.

I’ve never met anyone who can claim that as their primary profession. The card also refers to him as an explorer and conservationist.

The triptych depicts the essence of the man.

Harper is the founder of Australian Desert Expeditions, and the leader of the last desert-walking camel cavalcade in Australia.

When we’re out there you realise that it’s important; the desert should be walked—I’m not speaking for my sake, I think for the nation’s sake really.

He escorts ecologists, ornithologists, archaeologists and all sorts of other professionals, as well as lay people, through the desert.

He has large, strong hands, and he grips mine with both gentleness and strength as he greets me in the middle of Sydney.

He stands out among the students running through the ABC building on their way to class and from the workers, coffee in hands, coming into the office with lanyards hanging around their necks.

Harper is a man out of place in the city.

Around him the world bustles, but his eyes are still and calm as they meet mine across the the studio.

‘I don’t relax here at all,’ he says.

‘I’m lucky enough to spend five months in the desert where there is no noise.

‘We take people on our trips who have never sat round a campfire, who have never been where there is no street lights or haven’t been where there is no mobile phone or anything.

‘You can see them change. It’s quite amazing. It’s fantastic to watch, just their whole body clock and everything just resets itself with the dawn and the dusk and the sunrise instead of lights and the rest of it.’

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At the moment Harper is in the middle of a three-year project centred around a transect of the Simpson Desert, essentially a line drawn on the 138th meridian.

With his crack squads of academics and eco-tourists, he walks through some of the most secluded areas on the planet, and the experience actually yields an amazing variety of observations.

‘When you’re walking, you have to see where you’re putting your feet, consequently not only are you looking to see where you’re going so you don’t fall over, but you don’t miss anything,’ he says.

‘You see everything and you see the story of the desert literally written in the sands. You see what happened the night before on the sand dunes with the little tracks of the hopping mice or whatever it might be and you see the artefacts about whoever lived there before, both Indigenous and from European explorers and prospectors and stockmen.

‘We’re looking at the flora and fauna, the birds, the plants, the animals, the reptiles, the mammals, the marsupials, soil carbon analysis and also looking at what Aboriginal artefacts are out there, who lived out there before. What did they leave behind? How did they live? How did they die?

‘Everything. Because of course, all of that is connected. Where we’re surveying hasn’t been surveyed before, ‘cos it’s bloody hard to get to.’

Research in the Simpson Desert, according to Harper, is concentrated on the fringe, particularly to the east.

‘But that’s 5 per cent of the desert. We need to know what’s going on in the other 95 per cent so we can put the 5 per cent into context.’

Earlier this year, Harper received an OAM for his services to environmental science, research and adventure tourism, but the the gong doesn’t mean that his passion for his work has waned.

‘Hardly anybody walks the Australian desert for prolonged periods anymore,’ he says. 'When we’re out there you realise that it’s important; the desert should be walked—I’m not speaking for my sake, I think for the nation’s sake really.

'We need to be out in this huge expanse of central Australia, the heart of the country, walking the country finding out what’s going on. We need to collect all the information about what’s going on and we need to use that for further land management.'

It’s a gargantuan task, but one that Harper is willing to commit time to. His identity is heavily invested in feeling his feet on the desert sands.

‘You’re not travelling through the desert, you’re actually living in it.’

Walking across the desert for science and silence Listen to this episode of Off Track to find out more about the 'desert walker'.

Listen to a new outdoor adventure every week with Off Track.



