At Camp 8 of the Simpson Desert Expedition Madigan recorded some of his observations on the sand ridges of the desert, illustrating their formation with a pencil sketch. Twelve miles into their crossing of the desert the sand-hills were already becoming more regular and closer together. On the second day alone they had crossed 70 of these sand-hills, and they were approximately four to the mile and 80 feet high.

Madigan's expedition was financed by AA Simpson of Adelaide, and was timed to take advantage of two good seasons of rain. Madigan was not the first to attempt a crossing of this desert. Before him there had been David Lindsay who had skirted it in the 1880s, Augustus Poeppel who was surveying the South Australian border in 1880, and in 1936 Ted Colson had crossed the desert from west to east, from his station at Blood Creek to Birdsville. Colson though had mostly followed the 26th parallel, the South Australian - Northern Territory border. Madigan's course would enable him to assess the sand-hills, and make scientific observations of the desert's geology and its ecology.