The Outback Adventures DVD is a compilation of three documentaries (total run time 115 mins) featuring Denis Bartell "Desert Walker":
This is an account of a solo journey by foot across Australia from Burketown on the Gulf of Carpentaria to Adelaide on the Gulf St Vincent, a distance of some 2,200 kilometres. This five and a half month epic walk would pass through the very heart of the Simpson, the largest parallel sand dune desert in the world—a daunting place with an average rainfall of less than 130mm and temperatures ranging from 60º C to near freezing. Departing Camooweal en route the next township was Maree, 1487 kilometres to the south. Imagine no towns, no support vehicles and only a handful of station people living in a vast emptiness. It could only happen in Australia. Denis’s courage and determination to succeed fired the imagination of the Australian public who donated $80,000 to his favourite cause, The Royal Flying Doctor Service. Their aircraft and personnel provide a MANTLE OF SAFETY over Australia’s outback for the people who live in it, or the traveller just passing through.
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After two attempts over 15 months, Denis Bartell’s epic journey by canoe followed the normally dry Cooper Creek from The Dig Tree in Queensland to Australia’s Inland Sea, Lake Eyre in South Australia - a distance of some 700 kilometres. As the flood waters from the vast Queensland catchment areas of the Thompson and Barcoo Rivers joined and flowed slowly into the Cooper, Denis was able to paddle his canoe through one of the driest regions in Australia. The waters dried up upon reaching the Birdsville Track but an even bigger flood the following year enabled him to complete his journey as the waters finally reached and almost filled the magnificent Lake Eyre basin.
Guided by Denis Bartell, his daughter Susan and three of her closest friends set out to walk across the Simpson Desert just as her father had done 22 years before. This is their journey as recorded for Global BC News Canada. Through the highs and the painful lows these four ordinary Australian mums always remained focused and at the end of their journey their effort had raised well over $130,000 for breast cancer research.
