Davidson, a young woman who had "never
changed a light-bulb, sewn a dress,
mended a sock, changed a tyre, or
used a screwdriver," took a train
to Alice Springs in central Australia
with six dollars in her pocket and
a wildly unrealistic ambition: to
capture wild camels, train them, and
then cross the great desert of Western
Australia with them.
Her journey is an exploit in the
extravagant tradition of the great
Victorian explorers, but Davidson
is not only an explorer, but also
a young woman who wishes to get past
the negativity and alienation of modern,
urban existence and seek fulfillment
in close harmony with the natural
world. Testing her physical and emotional
resources to the limit, Davidson crosses
half of Australia on foot, in the
process coming to know the desert,
the rhythms of traditional Aboriginal
society, and herself. Davidson
seeks transformation, epiphany, and
freedom, and eventually she finds
these things. Her story turns out
to be not of a hand-to-hand battle
with the forces of nature but of a
passionate love affair with them.
This book won the 1980 Thomas Cook
Travel Book Award.
Davidson was born on a cattle station
in Queensland, Australia. She writes
extensively for National Geographic and
other magazines, and has also written
a novel, Ancestors. She divides
her time among London, India, and Australia
and is currently working on a new book
based on life in Rajasthan.
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