Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first drive across the Simpson Desert

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the first vehicle crossing of the Simpson Desert – the world’s largest parallel sand dune desert, and one of the most remote areas of Australia.

Over the course of two weeks in 1962, the Sprigg family travelled across the 1100 dunes in their Nissan Patrol G60 at an average of 5km/h, making their way without any detailed maps or tracks.

The family of four all squeezed into the front bench seat of the Nissan, with a 200-litre drum of petrol and another of water loaded into the back, before setting off for Birdsville in south-west Queensland from Andado Station in the Northern Territory.

“I have such fond memories of that G60. It was such a robust and reliable vehicle. I was even shorter then than I am now, and Nissan had even provided me a way of seeing forward — through the air vents below the windscreen,” says Doug Sprigg, who was just seven years old at the time.

“With four of us sitting across the front seat, a 200-litre drum of fuel in the back, and a 200-litre drum of water, the vehicle was pretty heavily loaded, so I got to see the scenery through the air vents, but the big sand dunes coming up I could see through the windshield.”

In celebration of the momentous achievement, Nissan Australia brought a restored G60 Patrol to visit Sprigg at his property – Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

“Dad used his four-wheel-drives to go and explore different parts of the country and one of the places he came to in 1937, as a geology student, was Arkaroola. He fell in love with it, and later he went to the state government and tried to convince them to buy it as a National Park,” he said.

“Parks wasn’t interested, so eventually he bought it in 1968, and it’s been about the same ever since. There is nowhere quite like this – a 144,000-acre property, and it has an amazing diversity of geology, animals and plants in these arid lands.”

But Mr Sprigg says it wasn’t just his father who had an adventurous spirit.

“Mum was the one that did a lot of the preparations [for the Simpson Desert trip]. They were an amazing team. Without mum, dad wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful,” he recalled.

“And the vehicle was magnificent. Every other vehicle had significant problems, with gearboxes in particular, or with differentials, but the Nissan never had any issues. And it was punished – Dad believed that vehicles had to work for their living.”

Today, the Simpson Desert is a far more popular – and accessible – place for those wanting a challenging adventure, with thousands of people making the trip across it each year.