The Simpson Desert?!? Sounds like you need a drink!
Although I agree with you in principle, I can't stress one thing enough: up-front design. You really need to spend some time (ie: money) at the start (especially since it's a multi-component system) and that'll save you a bunch later on. Whilst you might not be concerned about making a system perfect, with a decent amount of fore-thought, all the components should fall into place with a little thinking about the glue to interface them together.
(I haven't been out to the Simpson in years - where were you?)