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Robyn Davidson

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1. Walking the desert with Mr Eddie

   In 1977 Robyn Davidson walked about 1,700 miles alone from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean with four camels and her dog Diggity. For a stretch through Pitjantjatjara country, the elder Mr Eddie walked beside her. He knew where to find water, food and the right route, and he joked with her across a near-total language gap. His competence in land she found hostile turned her from expedition leader into apprentice, and showed that the 'empty' desert was a known, inhabited place.

2. Sponsorship converts a private act into a spectacle

   Davidson could only fund the trek by accepting National Geographic sponsorship, which meant periodic visits from a photographer and an obligation to deliver a story. Once the journey had a buyer, the press cast her as the 'camel lady', and tourists and reporters hunted her down. An act meant to escape being looked at became defined by being looked at. The money that makes an independent venture possible also installs an audience whose expectations reshape it.

3. Solitude strips away the socially constructed self

   Months alone in the desert wore away Davidson's habitual self-image, her social masks and even her sense of clock time. What replaced them was a raw, present-tense attention to land, animals and body. The identity people carry is largely maintained by other people's reflection of it, so removing the audience for long enough removes much of the self it held in place. The process is both liberating and close to madness.

4. The journey starts in the preparation

   Davidson spent about two years in Alice Springs learning to catch, train and handle feral camels, working under harsh employers in a hostile frontier town before she took a single step toward the coast. Seen this way, the famous walk is the visible end of a long, unglamorous apprenticeship in skill and endurance. The decision to go mattered less than the stubborn years spent making going possible.

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