Adventurous Women 4 - Robyn Davidson

 This adventure has always seemed more outrageous and foreign to me than most of the others I've read about, including skiing to the North Pole. That, I can imagine. Riding a camel across Australia just boggles my mind. The name of the book is Tracks. It was also made into a movie, but I haven't seen that.


In 1977, Robyn Davidson decided to cross the Australian Outback by camel. She managed to convince National Geographic to sponsor the event in return for a story. The trek was photographed by NatGeo.

Of course, camels are not indiginous to Australia. She thought they would be perfectly suited to the climate and the task, so she finally procured four of them that had been brought to Australia by other explorers who had also thought the same. A dog also accompanied her expedition. Except for the occasional appearances of the photographer, she trekked 1700 miles with only the camels and a dog.

A great deal of the tale is the preparations. There is a fair amount of Australian cultural tension. She dealt with Aborigines at Alice Springs where she staged the expedition, and learned quite a lot about the treatment of those native peoples.

The trip was hot, lonely, at times desperate. To be honest, I don't know if I could have done something like this. The heat doesn't appeal. The bleakness of the landscape doesn't call me. OK... ice is bleak too. Must just be me.

Taking care of four camels and trying to make miles sounds more like a job than an adventure. But I loved the book.

It's mind-blowing that Robyn is only a couple of years younger than I am. She has also written a recent memoir called Unfinished Woman. I might want to read this.

In other news: I managed to edit a fair amount. We got out of the driveway without too much trouble. I got a (rare for me) migraine after lunch and had to lie down for a while. All better now.

See Ordinary Women