Walk Across Australia: The First Solo Crossing by David Mason

David Mason walked across Australia because no one else had done it. He did it on his own with no support crew. After his experiences in the French Foreign Legion, it was at once a challenge and a way to reconnect with life, with people, and with Australia. In taking on the challenge, he sought to raise funds for the Fred Hollows Foundation. David sought to demonstrate that, in taking on the challenges we face, we live, rather than taking the easy way out and living lives of quiet desperation.

In the course of that expedition, he was also the first recorded person to walk solo east-west across the Simpson Desert and its 1100 dunes. For this achievement, he was named Australia's Adventurer of the Year and awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Geographic Society.

"The idea for a walk across Australia at its widest points came to me in 1990. I was a French Foreign Legionnaire on the Ethiopian border. It was a place where life could depend on the whim of a stranger and the tensing of a muscle on a trigger. It was in the face of such uncertainty that I wanted to create something positive - the dream of an adventure that would sustain and motivate me through my remaining years in the Legion. I thought that to conceive, design and then execute a plan would be to give a life to a dream of my own. It would be a contrast to so many of the things I experienced in the Legion."