About book Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles Of Australian Outback (1995)
“Tracks” is a phenomenal travelogue of a 2700 km voyage through the Australian desert; by Robyn Davidson and four camels. It’s the proof that a single (lunatic?) idea, a seemingly fuzzy project (a woman crossing the desert with camels) can be accomplished. As Davidson put it at the end of the trip, she learned two most important things: (1) we’re as powerful and strong as long as we want; (2) the hardest part on “my” enterprise is the first step, to take the first decision.Evidently, it was a trip against all odds. People said that she wanted to commit suicide; that the trip was a sort of penalty for her mother’s suicide; that she wanted publicity and it was a way to prove a woman can cross a desert.It was about learning the “tenacity lesson”. It implied learning on how to shoot a gun; even her own dog Diggity, when she found she had been poisoned while crossing the desert. Or: when was confronted with wild camels, to shoot some of them; and yet spare one huge, beautiful one: Aldebaran. Or: when she had to spank/punish camel Bub in the desert. Davidson took with her Zeleika: a 4 ½ year old female (wild) camel; very young, considering that camels can live up to 50 years.1977. Coming from Queensland, 27 year-old Davidson arrived to Alice Springs penniless; to be more precise: with 6 dollars and a dog. She had to work in a pub and two ranches first… to raise money for the trip. She had a hard time at the ranch of cruel Kurt; and also at the ranch on afghan Sallay. After two years of hard “training” on how to deal and treat…and raise camels, she finally came to “trip time”. Planned: a 6-8 months travel; 30 kilometers per day, 6 days a week; ideally, to end before year-end; load: 750 kg of “luggage”; set-off date: March. She wanted to go alone; but money was important; she wrote a letter and she managed to get $4,000 from the National Geographic Society and a flight ticket to Sydney; there, she met with those “extraordinary Americans” who told her:”we hope to see you in Washington”. After that interview she felt euphoria,…and then depression, self-doubt and hate. She met photographer Rick Smolan, a Jew from New York. They had arranged he would show up intermittently in the voyage in some spots (first in Red Bank…then in Ayers Rock etc).. For some time she hated him: he took photos of a secret ceremony of the aboriginal people. Hate didn’t last long. Davidson was very suspicious about photographs: the camera lies: photos never tell the truth. Rick made an abundant collection of the departure, and other moments. I’ve found of particular interest her anthropological view (she’s been called a “social anthropologist”) of the aboriginal people. She supplies the reader with plenty of data that astonishes any outsider. Especially touching is the problem of the land. Davidson considers: “their land is everything to them; without this relationship they become ghosts”; it’s a racial genocide, she accuses, being perpetrated for long, in Australia. She points the finger at the mining corporations (like Conzinc Rio Tinto);and the aboriginal reserves being coveted. She mentions the high mortality rate (200/1000), the diseases …the fact that most elder people are blind.IT’S THE OLDEST CULTURE IN THE WORLD, OF WHICH THE REST OF THE WORLD DOESN’T KNOW (OR CARE) ABOUT:…THEY DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME: THEY’RE DYING.Davidson questioned for several times the European culture: “once again I compared the European society to the aboriginal one; one so archetypically PARANOID, GREEDY and DESTRUCTIVE, the other so HEALTHY”. “I wish I could understand better their language”.She opens a certain exception to the PITJANTJARE people: better off than other ones, because uranium not being extracted from their reserves.AFTER 160 YEARS OF NON-DECLARED WAR, THE LAST SLAUGHTER HAPPENED IN 1930 IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY. (*)Davidson seems to agree with the solution proposed by Kevin Gilbert to the land problem: “That white Australia to give the blacks a just parcel of land for their self-sufficiency”. The author reminds us about the Australian apartheid: “A so deep rape of the soul that disease remains in most blacks;… a psychological disease”.Some of the best moments (of fun, of chewing Pituri, of laughter and parody) of her trip are in the company of little Eddie; a warm aboriginal man. A self-transformational section of her journey: “after weeks with Eddie I became a different person…to my eyes I was becoming normal ,balanced, healthy, though, to others eyes, I looked crazy”. Why, the change? -Because the subconscious mind became more active and important…in the form of dreams and sensations. Because, rocks and animals and other natural phenomenon had a special meaning. Because, for a while, Davidson may have believed, too, in an epoch of dreams : “when earth was crossed by ancestral beings with supernatural energy and power; these beings were biologically different from contemporary men; some were a synthesis of animal and man, plant or force like fire and water”. While in the desert, now alone, she wrote a letter to a friend (Steve): “I would give anything for a friendly face, even for an unfriendly one,… even human noise would be good”. >“THIS IS PARADISE; I WISH I COULD GIVE YOU A PIECE OF IT”.There are dark moments, nevertheless; like when she cannot find water; and starts having auditory hallucinations: voices she hears; one nasty one who tells her “you’ve gone too far this time, you’re worthless, now you’re mine, caught you!”; and a calm voice: “be calm, lay down”; or voices screaming. She tried her own voice. She cried, yelled stupidly at the dunes….but finally found a well of water and greenery for the camels. Dark also: when she got her hip dislocated; and camel Dookie could not walk due to an infection. Near the end of the trip Davidson had seen the most impressive and surrealistic piece of landscape. She had escaped the hyenas of the Perth press that wanted her story for $1,000.By November she reached Carnarvon. She wrote that by the seaside “you could see the sunset showing over the Indian Ocean, past the last dune”….”so white a beach that left me blind…camel Goliath went straight to the bath...I felt free”. (*) I have made my own research on these issues and found elucidating the work of Marcia Langton (actress, activist, academic, political agitator) on “Indigenous exceptionalism” (audio tape); she refers that only in the 1967 referendum the aboriginal people became citizens.UPDATE Now that a movie has been made, it's interesting to read both author and actress together commenting on. Robyn saying:"...it's kind of schizophrenic [the movie is based on her life,but not exactly "my life"]...it's quite bizarre...disorienting". Mia W.(actress) said about the camels, they are "incredible sensitive... and intelligent". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqxW8l...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o-mbY...http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/20...(...it's unrealistic to translate the book into a movie...)
This account of Robyn Davidson's trek across the Australian outback with four camels and a dog does what all great books do - it makes you run through the whole gamut of emotions. I experienced moments of intense dislike towards the narrator, anger at her actions, joy at her triumphs and tears over her heartbreak and losses.The most famous photos from this expedition show a young, pretty sarong-clad Robyn at the end of her journey cavorting in a turquoise Indian ocean with her camels. It is an idyllic scene that has very little to do with her actual story, as she points out throughout the book. Based on this image I expected an Eat, Pray, Love type of journey towards personal enlightenment, but thankfully Tracks is so much more than this. First the things I disliked: It's very hard to reconcile Davidson's view that camel's are wonderful, intelligent, noble creatures with the descriptions of her gunning down wild bucks in the desert. She did this to protect her own camels because the young males can be highly aggressive and dangerous, but it would have been apparent to her from the first that killing camels would be necessary on this trip and I still don't really understand how she justified it. These creatures were doing nothing wrong and they died, often in agony because her journey was more important to her than their lives. At the very least she could have learnt to shoot straight to avoid causing them much needless suffering. Her sense of entitlement over wild creatures is apparent from the beginning when she tells Kurt that she wants a baby crow to raise. They hunt for nests and find one crow with a very engaging personality that they decide to steal a baby from, but Kurt brings down the whole nest, killing three babies out of four in the process. Davidson expresses her horror and sorrow over this, but doesn't really own her responsibility. She is extremely angry about the way Indigenous people and the land have been treated but never acknowledges that at time she too is an oppressor. For example she "beats the crap" out of one of her camels because it became frightened when something fell off its pack, but then writes unselfconsciously about the land being "conquered, fenced up and beaten into submission." Rick is the one who makes reference to her moral culpability at the end, when he sits up in his sleep and accuses her of killing her camels parents in order to bring them on her journey. To her credit, Davidson claims that there is some deep truth in his words.Another thing that bothered me was Davidson's mixed feelings towards the end of the book about segregation of Aborigines from a dance in one of the towns she visits. Her companions were outraged but Davidson had formed a strong attachment to station people and she claims that their racism came down to the fact that they couldn't understand why the Aborigines didn't share their Protestant work ethic. After railing against the casual racism of all the redneck townsfolk and tourists she comes across on her trip I found her attempt to whitewash (pun intended) the prejudices of the very people whose forebears drove Indigenous people from their sacred land to be extremely disingenuous.Apart from this, Tracks is a very honest book and this is its saving grace. Davidson doesn't try to glorify her journey or downplay its hardships. Although there would have been a lot of misogyny and backwardness in outback Australia at this time her difficulties with other people can't be blamed totally on this. She manages to alienate a lot of people and it's easy to see why she chose the company of animals over humans. In many ways she is running from her problems rather than confronting them but in the process she learns a great deal about herself. She has a genuine respect for Aboriginal culture and a desire to immerse herself in the land and see the world from a different perspective. I could relate to her need to strip away all of the facades and illusions of "civilisation" and see what was left. At first I was preoccupied with the 'whys' of this journey but by the end it didn't matter. There are some beautiful passages describing the peace and sense of wholeness that Davidson found in the outback, but just when you think that she has found the what she was seeking something tragic and heartbreaking happens to throw her back into turmoil. This is a complex book about a complex woman and its lessons can't be reduced to a few sentences. It's also a wonderful snapshot of the Australian outback at a certain point in history and it gives some excellent insights into the Indigenous struggle for identity. I find it so sad that places like Utopia, described in the book as a thriving community, have degenerated so badly and that the grip of mining companies has tightened over the land. All of the forces working against the outback and the Aboriginal people have only grown stronger over the last three decades and that is a terrible tragedy.
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More of 1.5 stars really. I wanted to like this book a lot more. This book lacked a lot for me. For starters, while I appreciate her need to keep a lot of her motivations and revelations private, it makes it difficult to relate to someone on this type of journey with so little to go on. What makes these books good is knowing why someone chose to do this type of journey, and how it changed that person. I didn't get either in this book, which made me not invested at all in the story. Also, she wrote far more about her annoyances than she did her joy, which made for a lot of complaining and grumbling. There were a lot more general observations than personal, which was unsatisfying for a personal account. A lot of readers have been left wondering why she did this journey, I was left not really caring why she did it, but wondering more why she bothered to write a book about it.
—Kristin
Robyn Davidson was a young woman who had a dream of traveling with camels through the bush of the northern and western areas of Australia. She arrived in Alice Springs with her dog and six dollars, hoping to find work and learn to train camels. After two years she still did not have the funds to start on her trek, so she signed a contract with "National Geographic" to allow a photographer to spend a few days with her several times during the trip.Davidson was a hard working, tenacious woman who loved the camels and her dog. She felt that she enjoyed being around animals more than people. It did occasionally make me cringe when she had to discipline the animals to keep them in line, but the camels were tricky, intelligent, and stubborn. The "camel lady" set off from Alice Springs and traveled six months through the Aboriginal Reserve areas and the desert, westward to the Indian Ocean.Davidson tended to overreact to the presence of Rick Smolan, the camera man. The trip would not have been possible without the National Geographic sponsorship. He was also very helpful obtaining water and food for the camels so she could continue across the desert. She wanted the trip to be a personal journey, and had a hard time compromising during the three times Smolan drove out into the desert to photograph. By the end of the trip, she valued his friendship.In addition to her interesting travel story, she also wrote about the sexism and racism that was present in 1970s Australia. She was especially concerned about the treatment of the Aborigines who had been rounded up into special areas (similar to the way the Native Americans were treated in North America). My favorite part of the book was when she walked with an older Pitjantjara man for several weeks, gaining a close connection with the environment. Davidson was a daring, gutsy woman who set a goal, and although she was not the most organized person, she reached it. I enjoyed this colorful memoir set in the bush of Australia.
—Connie
I'm not really fascinated by camels, but I am a sucker for stories of desert landscapes transforming human beings, and this book is a moving marriage of the two. I found the portrayal of the way immersion in a landscape like the Australian outback can affect a person really powerful. This idea is extended from the author, who is changed by her journey, to the aboriginal people as being truly formed by the land. I've experienced just enough of this to be transformed a little myself in reading it, reminded that lightheartedness can be achieved in most situations, and nursing a longing to know my landscape in a way that I never will.Camels are the binding thread throughout the tale. They are characters in the story. While it didn't make me a camel romantic, I did enjoy getting to know some camels in detail. The struggles of the camels, woven in with the struggles of the author, make the story.My wife, who recommended the book to me, had trouble connecting with the motivation of the author. Robyn Davidson is inexplicably driven and even maniacal, but I had no trouble accepting this. I actually had a little bit of an opposite reaction - the mysterious origin of her drive to devote her life to this journey made her self-examinations and revelations more interesting to me. Maybe it boils down to how much identification we have with her in our own mysterious needs and drives.
—Dylan
