'Dune is a four-letter word', said Griselda Sprigg on the first day of her family's attempt to make the first motorised crossing of the forbidding Simpson desert. 'And so is bloody spinifex.'

Dune is a Four-letter Word tells the story of Griselda and Reg Sprigg's pioneering desert adventures - not only in the Simpson Desert but all over the vast Australian outback. Griselda's story is also the story of Arkaroola Sanctuary, how she, with her husband, Reg, turned a drought-stricken sheep station into the magnificent flora and fauna reserve and tourist mecca it is today.