Some roads are barely roads at all. The Colson Track is two faint wheel ruts pressed into red sand, running 336 kilometres through the western Simpson Desert, and after a season of rain or a stretch of long grass it can vanish entirely, leaving a driver to navigate by instinct and dune. It bears the name of Ted Colson, the South Australian bushman who in 1936 became the first person of European descent to cross the Simpson Desert. But Colson did not cross alone, and the fuller story belongs to two men and five camels.
By the time Colson set out, the Simpson had defeated better-funded expeditions. Charles Sturt had turned back from its margins; others had failed to push through the relentless ranks of parallel dunes. Colson waited for good rain, then on 26 May 1936 he left Bloods Creek, north-west of Oodnadatta, and struck east. With him went Peter Ains, an Aboriginal man of the Antakirinja people, and a string of five camels. Together they clambered over more than a thousand steep sand ridges, crossing the desert west to east and turning back to retrace the route. They reached Bloods Creek again on 29 June, after 36 days and close to 600 miles. The achievement was Colson's name in the record books, but the crossing was a partnership, and Peter Ains's knowledge of country and survival was woven through every mile of it.
The track that carries Colson's name does not retrace his exact route; it is a later thread of access through the same unforgiving country. Its northern end is marked only by a sign near the boundary of Numery Station, in Hale, Northern Territory. From there it runs south for 336 kilometres, most of it threading the swales, the low corridors between the dunes, until it reaches Lynnies Junction deep in the western Simpson, where it meets the WAA Line just east of the Rig Road. There are no towns along it, no fuel, no certainty. The track simply connects one edge of emptiness to another.
Travelling the Colson Track is an exercise in attention. The surface is mostly soft red sand, often badly corrugated, and the route should be attempted only in a high-clearance four-wheel drive carrying its own fuel, water and recovery gear. The ruts that define it are easily lost to washouts and seasonal growth, so navigation can shift from following a track to simply heading in the right direction across open desert, GPS in one hand and a wary eye on the dunes. This is also Aboriginal land and protected desert, and the law reflects it: a permit is required to cross Aboriginal land, and a separate permit is needed for travel through the Simpson Desert itself. The bureaucracy is a small reminder that this country has owners and guardians, and that crossing it is a privilege, not a right.
It would be easy to read the Colson Track as a monument to one tough European and leave it there. The truer reading holds two men in frame. Ted Colson earned his place in the story through grit and bushcraft, but his crossing succeeded because Peter Ains travelled with him, and because the camels, those imported ships of the desert, could go where horses had died. Aboriginal people had known this country for tens of thousands of years before any name was pinned to a track across it, and Ains carried a measure of that knowledge into the dunes. The faint line through the sand is less a triumph over the Simpson than a record of how people moved through it: carefully, in company, and always on the desert's own terms.
The Colson Track's reference point lies near 24.01 degrees S, 135.43 degrees E, in the western Simpson Desert, with the track running roughly north-south between Numery Station in the Northern Territory and Lynnies Junction near the WAA Line. From the air the defining feature is the Simpson's signature corduroy of parallel red dunes, running north-north-west to south-south-east; the track itself appears only as a hairline seam threading the swales between them. Recommended viewing altitude is 4,000 to 6,000 feet AGL to take in the dune pattern while still picking out the faint ruts. Nearest major airfield is Alice Springs (YBAS) to the north; long-range desert routing may also reference Birdsville (YBDV) far to the east. Expect extreme heat, blowing sand reducing visibility in wind, and no ground services across the entire crossing.