About
Us
Australian Desert Expeditions
(ADE) conducted its first expedition in 2007 whilst the company was trading as part of its
privately owned parent organisation, the long established Outback Camel Company. In 2008 ADE became a
separate company and was subsequently approved for admission to the Register of
Environmental Organisations in November 2009.
ADE is a non-government, not-for-profit company and has full Deductible Gift
Recipient (DGR) status.
Apart from Antarctica, Australia is the
driest continent in the world and has the largest desert region in the southern
hemisphere. More than a third of the continent is effectively desert; over two thirds of
the continent is classified as arid or semi-arid with the ten recognised deserts
comprising 18% of the mainland.
There are many plants and animals still to be
discovered by science. Three-quarters of Australia's biodiversity is yet to be identified
and forty-five per cent of continental Australia has never been comprehensively surveyed
by scientists.* Australian Desert Expeditions is facilitating to solve that problem by
challenging the desert research status quo, initiating and conducting surveys in the most
isolated desert regions that are inaccessible by conventional means.
Why do we use camels on
our surveys?
Vehicle based surveys have their place and purpose for ecological field work but
are severely limited in scope when it comes to exploring and documenting country (that
18% of the mainland) between limited access points.
ADE founder Andrew
Harper explains -
"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 1900s, very few people walk the remote desert anymore.
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 these waterholes was on foot, as we have done today. That
reveals the country - the continuum of country."
Writer and journalist Nicolas
Rothwell, who accompanied us on our inaugural 2007 expedition,
also observed that -
"ADE is a small part of a revolutionary tide in thinking about
the bush, and all inland Australia. The cameleering tradition has its place, as part of
the Australian past, a threatened heritage: but there is another, more pragmatic reason
for outback camel travel and this reason underlies ADE's march into empty country. It is
simply this: scientific expeditions and surveys mounted by vehicle or helicopter move
fast, and miss the context of what they see and find. The knowledge they gather is point
by point and incomplete, whilst teams who walk on foot, with their equipment borne beside
them, can reach deeper into country, and once there can proceed in slow, focused fashion, alert to all it holds.
(Nicolas Rothwell, Slow
Train to Kallakoopah, The Weekend Australian, August 2007)
Learn more about ADE's historical heritage
View our constitution
Our
management team
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