Aboriginal mythology speaks of tracks that crisscross the Australian Outback. According to the legend, the gods traveled these paths in the “Dreamtime,” singing out the names of objects and creatures they passed-wallaby, rocks, kangaroos, birds-and thereby sang the things into existence.
Robyn Davidson didn’t have the providence to sing creatures into existence, but her story has taken on mythical proportions all the same.
The 27-year-old Australian marched out of Redbank Gorge in the Northern Territory with four camels and her dog, Diggity, in 1978. Determined to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert alone, she was an idealistic ex-graduate student, feeling restless about the direction life was leading her. Eight months later, when she rode triumphantly into the turquoise waters of Hamelin Pool in the Indian Ocean off Australia’s west coast, she firmly had life by the reins.
Not only had she braved every natural hazard of the desert-poisonous snakes, extreme temperatures, violent storms-but in wandering through the bush she also had come to know intimately a strange land and its proud people that lay in the heart of her own country. She also discovered faith in herself.
In the 14 years since her journey, camel-trekking in the Outback has become a thriving business for a few small companies operating in the Alice Springs area. Her story has become a modern adventure-travel classic, first told in one of National Geographic’s best-remembered cover stories, “Alone Across the Outback,” then in the best-selling book “Tracks” (Pantheon, 1980, $12), which has been translated into 11 languages.
Now the story has been resurrected in “From Alice to Ocean” (Addison-Wesley, 1992, $49.95), a coffee-table book featuring excerpts from “Tracks” and additional photographs from Rick Smolan (see Alfred Borcover’s column on Page 2).
Set amid brilliant desert-red, sky-blue, apocalyptic topography, her story resonates forcefully. (Accompanying the book are two CDs, one that can be played on a Photo CD player, and one that can be played on a conventional audio CD player or inserted into an Apple computer with CD-ROM capabilities, in which case it becomes a multimedia re-creation of Davidson’s journey, combining audio, still photography and video images.)
“She listened to her own little inner voice,” says Smolan about the reasons Davidson’s story struck a chord with so many people. “That voice is a crazy little thing that we all dismiss as being frivolous, and she listened to it. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that after reading that book they felt like they were wasting their life.”
That, essentially, is Davidson’s point: She is not some bolder-than-thou adventurer; she was a woman who listened to herself, then acted. Of course it’s easier to sit “sipping gin on the veranda with friends, and making unending lists of lists which get thrown away, and reading books about camels,” she wrote. The hardest part about making your own tracks is getting started.
You’ll have to discover for yourself where to lay your own tracks. But for starters you can follow in Davidson’s footsteps on a fully supplied camel safari in the Outback. A handful of camel safari companies (see accompanying story) offer a good way to get your feet wet in the desert.
Trips range from a few hours to two weeks. For example, on one 2 1/2-day journey, you’ll travel by truck 93 miles into the desert to Glen Helen-the same spot from which Davidson launched her expedition-and you’ll work your way back to Alice Springs, riding through fields of eucalyptus, crossing dry river beds, soaking in the enormity of the desert. At night you’ll sleep under the stars, warmed by a maliwood fire and snug in a sleeping-baglike contraption called a swag. And if you’re like Davidson and many others, you’ll likely fall in love with a 2,000-pound, hump-backed animal, if not with the barren beauty of the desert.
Initially, the desert can be overwhelming. Smolan admits that when he first was there, the environment seemed big, brown and unimpressive. But as he traveled with Davidson, “It took on a whimsical Alice-in-Wonderland look, with strange animals and rock formations. You can see how much more beautiful the desert became to me in the progression of pictures.”
Davidson ended her journey a sort of “mythical being,” someone who was considered more courageous than the ordinary person could hope to be. That is precisely the opposite of what she’d intended-she wanted to prove that anyone was capable of such adventure. For, as she concludes in her book: “The trip was easy. It was no more dangerous than crossing the street, or driving to the beach, or eating peanuts. Camel trips, as I suspected all along, do not begin or end; they merely change form.”
