There's footage / DVD from his trip also - up on youtube some is, IIRC :-)

Yeah, sore bum, ouchies. That can be bypassed if you don't mind walking, don't mind camels, and don't mind being thought a bit girly:

* https://www.sidetracked.com/fieldjournal/crossing-australia-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson

Our family doesn't mind a long jolly, one of my favourites (that someone else did) was into the more restricted bits of Papua: Cannibals & Crampons (2001)

  In 2001, two British ex army officers set out to climb the unscaled face of Mandela--a remote mountain rising 15,400 ft. above the jungles of New Guinea. This is the extraordinary story of their trek through some of the world's most unexplored terrain.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShIfMP8rfg0