King of the Desert Extract

Allen & Unwin
Jul 2
5 min read

Updated: Jul 3

An extract from Nick Arley's book, King of the Desert.

Nick Arley began his motorcycling journey at age eleven, and the open spaces of rural New South Wales fuelled what became a lifelong obsession.

Later in life Nick moved to Canberra taking up employment in the Federal Government. During the week it was all suits and ties, but speed and adventure were never far from his mind.

From competing in local offroad motorcycle events to riding across the Arctic circle in Alaska, motorcycles have taken Nick far and wide. While living in Indonesia with his wife Nick regularly tested their Honda scooter to its limits exploring the offroad trails in Bali.

Returning home to Canberra, the desert started calling, Nick’s rides became longer, evolving into multi-state odysseys crossing the country. The risks were as real as the danger, but these were the foundation for his greatest challenge: the fastest crossing of all ten Australian Deserts unsupported on a motorcycle.

Below, Nick writes about what happened after he decided to cross all 10 Australian deserts by motorcycle and break the Guinness World Record.

I arrived home on 17 July 2022 and hadn’t been there five minutes before I was telling my wife, Stace, about my new plans. I saw a look in her eyes that said: You’ve just come back!

We sat down to talk it over and I convinced her I was serious: I was going to attempt to break a Guinness World Record. It would be a huge undertaking and I didn’t know how or where to start. I’d found it easy to plan recreational rides, but breaking a world record was next level. I mulled the idea over for a week or two, going over my previous ride plans and maps, and came up with a rough idea of what I needed to do. Already I knew that, if I was going to pull this off, I had a lot to learn.

One of the first conditions I imposed on my challenge was that I would only ride during daylight hours. This was a rule I had adhered to all my riding life, and for good reason. Riding a motorcycle in the bush at night is very dangerous, due to the amount of wildlife you can run into. There are kangaroos, emus, camels, cattle and more kangaroos, just to name a few, and a collision with any of them can be life-threatening. I would be comfortable riding from dawn to dusk and no longer. With those parameters in mind, I got cracking.

First I had to find out exactly where the ten Australian deserts were! I’d never even considered how many deserts there were in the country. I’d crossed some on previous rides, but I had to find out where they all were to give me a clearer idea of the route I’d need to design. I didn’t know if there were roads or tracks passing through all of them. But I knew that Guinness World Records doesn’t just hand out world records casually, so I had to get serious.

In my research I discovered that Australia actually has more than ten deserts by name, but there are only ten deserts recognised geographically. These were the ones I had to cross.

The ten deserts of Australia, listed by size, are:

1. The Great Victoria Desert: 348,750 square kilometres

2. The Great Sandy Desert: 267,250 square kilometres

3. The Tanami Desert: 184,500 square kilometres

4. The Simpson Desert: 176,500 square kilometres

5. The Gibson Desert: 156,000 square kilometres

6. The Little Sandy Desert: 111,500 square kilometres

7. The Strzelecki Desert: 80,250 square kilometres

8. The Sturt Stony Desert: 29,750 square kilometres

9. The Tirari Desert: 15,250 square kilometres

10. The Pedirka Desert: 1250 square kilometres

They’re spread out centrally across the continent, with the largest portion occupying the Western Australian landmass, about as far away from my home in Canberra as I could get. This was going to be an epic ride. There were huge variances in size, and I would have to make sure my route traversed through all of them to the satisfaction of Guinness World Records.

I would spend the next year reading and researching everything I could about each of these desert areas: their geographical boundaries, the climate during the winter months, whether any water was available in each of them, whether there were roads that crossed them, and the type of terrain I would encounter. And it wasn’t only the deserts I needed to know about, it was also the availability of fuel supplies in the deserts, whether that be from cattle stations, Aboriginal communities or roadhouses. Fortunately, I had a thirst for information; I knew I had to prepare myself and my bike properly for such a rugged adventure.

The current record set by Benji Brundin was 29 days, 19 hours and 38 minutes and my initial plans were for a 20-day assault. I thought this was quite conservative, as I wouldn’t be riding at night or travelling crazy distances each day. I based my estimates on distances I had already travelled on previous trips under similar conditions. As I learned more about the deserts I hadn’t ridden, I could fine-tune them further. Within this estimated timeframe, there was room for me to push harder if I could but I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself.

I eventually settled on a plan with my route commencing at Marree in South Australia and heading to Birdsville in Queensland, where I would cross the Tirari, Strzelecki and Sturt Stony deserts. After that I would briefly enter the Northern Territory, before re-entering South Australia making for Coober Pedy, crossing the Simpson and Pedirka Deserts in the process. Travelling on I would continue westward into Western Australia to cross the Great Victoria Desert, then taking a more northerly direction to enter and then cross the Gibson Desert before heading westward again for the township of Wiluna. After Wiluna I would ride the entire Canning Stock Route, crossing the Little Sandy and Great Sandy deserts, before turning right towards the Northern Territory again and across the Tanami Desert. My route would finish at the township of Yuendumu.

There were two deserts I had not yet crossed on previous rides, they were the Little Sandy and Great Sandy deserts along the Canning Stock Route. These were the tough ones, and the ones I was most concerned about. The others I was looking forward to riding again, albeit all at once, but at least I had some prior knowledge which eased my mind.

I was quite happy with this route; it covered all the deserts and I calculated the distance to be somewhere between 5000 and 6000 kilometres dependent upon detours and/or track closures. Using my knowledge from prior desert rides I was able to plan out daily distances that I thought were achievable, which would give me my overall timeframe. This was something I would play around with, forecasting different durations to complete the trip.