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This map of part of Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland , named the Simpson Desert by CT Madigan, shows a number of explorers' routes: HV Barclay, 1878 -- TE Day, 1916 -- Charles Sturt, 1845 -- David Lindsay, 1885 -- CT Madigan, 1929 -- EA (Ted) Colson, 1936. The map was produced to accompany the article in volume 41 of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (South Australian Branch), in which Ted Colson describes his crossing of the Simpson Desert in 1936. With only an Aboriginal companion, Peter Ains, he crossed from Blood Creek Station to Birdsville, and returned. He had been inspired by Cecil Madigan's aerial surveys of 1929, and aware that rains had fallen recently in the desert, Colson set out in May 1936 and made the crossing and the return trip in 36 days. He was the first European to make a complete crossing of the desert.

European explorers had been repulsed by the sand ridges and lack of water and feed for their animals since 1845 when Charles Sturt reached the desert's eastern edge. Barclay skirted its northern edge in 1878, Charles Winnecke and David Lindsay in 1884 and 1885 skirted the east and south of the desert. In 1916 TE Day, the Surveyor General of South Australia followed several of the rivers south until they dried up in the desert. In 1929 Cecil Madigan made a series of aerial surveys which revealed the extent and the nature of the desert which he named for AA Simpson, President of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (South Australia) and his sponsor. Madigan would conduct a scientific exploration of the desert in 1939, using camels for transport, and making national radio broadcasts and a film.

Colson, Edmund Albert 1881-1950

Madigan, C. T. (Cecil Thomas), 1889-1947

State Library of South Australia: Mortlock Wing. Taking it to the edge August 2004-