The two Simpson Desert videos I put out a couple of years ago run well over an hour combined. Between them they cover which direction to cross, which track to take, fuel and water calculations, tyre pressures, recovery gear, driving technique, weather, wildlife, and a lot more.
Tens of thousands of views. Hundreds of comments. More questions than I could answer individually.
And yet — the videos have a problem.
What a Video Can't Do
At home on the couch, a video works. You can pause it, rewind it, take notes. You can work through it at your own pace and come back to the chapters that matter to you.
But once you're out there — somewhere between Big Red and Purni Bore with flies in your face and a weather front rolling in — you can't pull up YouTube and start scrubbing through a 40-minute video looking for a specific answer. That's not how field decisions work.
And even before it comes to that, there's only so much detail you can pack into a video format before you lose people. I covered the main topics. But there's a whole layer underneath — the nuance, the edge cases, the stuff that actually gets people into trouble — that just doesn't fit on screen.
What I Kept Seeing Out There
I've crossed the Simpson many times over the past 14 years with a wide variety of people and groups — from very experienced desert travellers to people doing their first remote trip. And what I found out there surprised me.
The number of people genuinely struggling — not just having a tough day, but actually caught out — when they really didn't need to be.
People with no plan for a weather front moving in. No idea where to position themselves or their camp. People fighting flies that were grinding them down by day three because they had no real strategy for managing them. People who'd packed as if they were heading somewhere with a servo around the corner and couldn't work out why they were exhausted and dehydrated by midday.
None of this is the Simpson's fault. The information exists. Most of it is even in those two videos. But people weren't finding it, weren't applying it, or simply needed it in a form they could actually use when it counted.
That's when I decided to write the book.
What the Book Covers
The Simpson Desert Travel Guide goes into a level of detail that a video format can't carry.
Weather in the Simpson gets a proper treatment — not just what to expect, but what to do when a front moves in and you're camped on an exposed dune. Where to find shelter. How to read the conditions early enough that you're making the call before the pressure is on. That kind of decision-making framework doesn't compress into a video chapter. Fuel consumption on sand runs 2–3× what you'd use on bitumen — the book covers the exact calculation methodology for your specific vehicle and route.
Flies gets its own section too, because everyone knows about them but almost nobody has a real plan for managing them across multiple days. The book covers what actually works, what doesn't, and how to structure your days so the flies don't break you by day three.
Campsite selection — where you camp in the Simpson matters far more than most people realise. Not just for comfort, but for safety. The book walks through how to read terrain and pick a site that works regardless of what the weather throws at you overnight.
This is the layer of detail that separates a good trip from a rough one. Two years of writing, multiple crossings, and more conversations with struggling desert travellers than I care to count went into it.
The Videos Are Still Worth Watching
If you haven't seen them yet, start there — I've also put together a full Simpson Desert resource hub on AllOffRoad if you want everything in one place.
Part 1 — direction and route selection, permits, fuel and water requirements, vehicle prep, tools, comms, and emergency planning.
Part 2 — recovery gear, sleeping solutions, clothing, weather, desert etiquette, hygiene, driving technique, tyre pressure, navigation apps, towing a camper, and dangerous wildlife.
But if you're serious about the crossing — if you want to go in prepared rather than just hopeful — the book is where the real detail lives.
The full guide — 260 pages, PDF and EPUB, instant download — is at simpsondesertguide.com.au.
