Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

“I hated myself for my infernal cowardice. It is such a female syndrome, so much the weakness of animals who have always been prey. I had not been aggressive enough or stood up to him enough. And now this impotent, internal, angry stuttering.”

Davidson positions her memoir as a feminist text that argues for the disruption of patriarchal structures and subverting conventional notions of femininity. Davidson feels frustrated with herself for being a coward in the face of Kurt’s abuse because she sees her behavior as a symptom of her social and sexual conditioning. This moment marks a turning point in her self-discovery journey and compels her toward Finding Empowerment Via Independence and Courage.

“It seems ridiculous now, to talk of my growing sense of freedom given the feudal situation I was living in, but anything could be mended, anything forgotten, any doubt withstood during a walk through those timeless boulders, or down that glittering river-bed in the moonlight.”

Davidson’s musings on her time in Alice highlight the Relationship Between Humans and Nature as a central theme in the text. Although Davidson works in a hostile environment suffering near constant emotional abuse, she still perceives the beauty of her surroundings, which keeps her focused on the goals of her journey. Language like “timeless,” “glittering,” and “moonlight” convey the transformative aspects of the natural world and the ways it positively impacts her perspective.

“My grip on reality was a little shaky. I wanted to see my friends again because I was beginning to realize how removed from everything but camels and madmen I had become. The time with Kurt had had a weird effect on me—I was self-protective, suspicious and defensive and I was also aggressively ready to pounce on anyone who looked like they might be going to give me a hard time.”

Davidson affects a reflective tone as she meditates on the Interplay Between Solitude and Self-Discovery. The more time she spends on her own in Alice, the more reclusive and estranged from reality she becomes. While she values her independence, she also notices that she needs positive relationships in her life to stave off her “suspicious and defensive” tendencies. The absence of these relationships forces her to look internally, grappling with the person she is and who she wants to become.

“I liked these people, agreed with them and supported them, but I did not want them around me. I had won so much, had gained so much ground all on my own, that I felt, psychologically at least, self-sufficient. I did not want potential friendships complicating things.”

This passage conveys the tension Davidson feels throughout her trip between her desire for solitude and her need for companionship. While she appreciates her friends, she wants to cultivate her independence and she fears that letting others too close will compromise her mission and her pursuit of personal empowerment. Davidson’s ability to find a balance between independence and community support represents a key aspect of her arc across the memoir.

“The joy of being on my own, of living in a fantasy place, and of dreaming about the trip without ever coming to terms with the reality of it was beginning to pall. It dawned on me that I was procrastinating, pretending, play-acting, and that was the source of discomfort. If everyone else believed I would eventually take the camels out into the desert, I did not.”

Through her first-person narration, Davidson invites the reader into her private internal experience, exposing her doubts and insecurities on the page. She doesn’t simply record her excitement and achievement but also moments of fear, anger, and inner turmoil, illustrating the ways taking risks challenges her psychologically. Davidson feels determined to complete her mission, but she also faces constant fear and uncertainty. These more vulnerable aspects of her experience further humanize her and her journey.

“For many outback people, the effect of almost total isolation coupled with that all-encompassing battle with the earth is so great that, when the prizes are won, they feel the need to build a psychological fortress around the knowledge and possessions they have broken their backs to obtain. That fiercely independent individualism was something akin to what I was feeling now—the stiffness, the inability to incorporate new people who hadn’t shared the same experience.”

Davidson notes the distinct features of life in the outback to highlight the ways her environment shapes her evolution the longer she’s away from her familiar life. Her experience allows her to gain an understanding of “outback people” and the psychological effects of “almost total isolation” in a way she wouldn’t be able to understand otherwise. This insight grants her perspective on her personal growth. While she values the independence and ferocity of spirit she gains on her journey, she also fears embracing “individualism” and “stiffness” too closely lest she compromise the very ethos behind her trek.

“And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself.”

The challenges Davidson experiences in Alice Springs push her to confront aspects of her character that she wants to see change. For example, Davidson’s extended search for her lost camels compels her to meditate upon her experiences, choices, and character in a more concerted manner. Losing the camels makes her feel vulnerable, defeated, and weak, forcing her to acknowledge her tendency toward fear. By confronting this facet of her character, Davidson takes ownership of her flaws and embraces an opportunity to grow.

“I had a long session with the mirror that afternoon, trying to find out if I was a bourgeois individualist or not. Perhaps if I had taken along a company of people and made it a communal camel trip, it would have met with approval? No, that would merely have been liberalism, wouldn’t it? Revisionist at best. Heaven forbid. You can’t win.”

Davidson’s image of having “a long session with the mirror” emphasizes her desire to interrogate her actions and motivations in order to grow and evolve. Here, her internal reflections convey her desire for authenticity in a vulnerable, self-interrogating tone. Davidson notes that she thought she understood her reasons for making her solo desert trek, but as soon as others commented on her plans she started to doubt her motivations. Her posture toward her self-doubt reflects a desire to come to terms with who she is, what she wants, and what she believes—questions she will continue to ask herself throughout the remainder of her journey.

“Suddenly it seemed as if this trip belonged to everybody but me. Never mind, I said, when you leave Alice Springs it will all be over. No more loved ones to care about, no more ties, no more duties, no more people needing you to be one thing or another, no more conundrums, no more politics, just you and the desert, baby. And so I pushed it all down into the dim recesses of my mind, there to fester and grow like botulism.”

Davidson admits that she tends to avoid uncomfortable interactions and emotions even before she sets out into the desert. This admission underscores Davidson’s vulnerability, inviting her audience to trust and relate to her. Davidson’s acknowledgment that pushing her uncomfortable feelings away only causes them “to fester and grow,” allows her to pursue honesty, self-examination, and self-advocacy over the course of her arc.

“Life was good. The country I was traveling through held my undivided attention with its diversity. This particular area had had three bumper seasons in succession and was carpeted in green and dotted with white, yellow, red, blue wildflowers. Then I would find myself in a creek-bed where tall gums and delicate acacias cast deep cool shadow. And birds. Everywhere birds.”

Davidson’s detailed descriptions of her desert surroundings highlight her evolving relationship with the natural world. The further Davidson travels into the Australian interior, the more her respect for and joy in nature grows. She notices the various colors of flowers around her, and the beauty of the trees, plants, and birds. She uses language like “carpeted,” “dotted,” “tall,” “delicate,” “deep,” and “cool” to vivify this meditative moment and to reify her evolving connection with her environment.

“I re-read the map. No enlightenment there. I was only fifteen or so miles from the settlement, and here was this giant dirt highway where there should only be sandstone and roly-poly. Should I follow it or what? Where the hell did it lead? Was it a new mining road? I checked the map for mines but there was nothing marked.”

The rapid-fire sequence of questions in Davidson’s internal monologue highlights her disorientation and fear when she gets lost at the start of her trek. The series of questions without answers captures the terror of this moment by laying out all of the doubts and fears she had—those regarding where she is, where she should be, and how she will get out of the situation. This scene depicts a moment of physical vulnerability for Davidson, which leads to a moment of mental vulnerability, emphasizing the connection between Davidson’s mind and body throughout her journey.

“I was feeling ambiguous about it all. Nothing portentous or grand was really happening to me. I had been expecting some miraculous obvious change to occur. It was all nice of course and even fun sometimes, but hey, where was the great clap of the thunder of awareness that, as everyone knows, knocks people sideways in deserts. I was exactly the same person that I was when I began.”

The gradual growth that Davidson experiences on her journey emphasizes personal evolution as an ongoing process rather than a miraculous or instantaneous shift. Here, Davidson’s internal monologue underscores her fear that the desert trip will not remake her the way she hopes because she hasn’t yet experienced “some miraculous obvious change.” Her worries that she’s “the same person” she was when her journey began also highlight the ways her lengthy isolation affects her self-perception, emphasizing the interplay between solitude and self-discovery. Her isolation affects  Davidson’s perspective on her growth—it’s not until she’s around others again that she’s able to recognize how much she’s changed.

“I wanted to give up. But to do what? Go back to Brisbane? If this, the hardest and most worthwhile thing I had ever attempted, was a miserable failure, then what on earth would succeed? I felt darker, more unhappy, more negative, more weakened than I had ever been.”

Davidson incorporates another moment of self-doubt into her account to reiterate her tendency toward fear, pointing to the memoir’s thematic engagement with finding empowerment via independence and courage. Davidson's vulnerability illustrates how taking risks and changing one’s life involves questioning and uncertainty. She admits that she is “miserable,” “unhappy,” “negative,” and “weakened”—descriptors that underscore Davidson’s desire to remake herself.

“I entered a new time, space, dimension. A thousand years fitted into a day and aeons into each step. The desert oaks sighed and bent down to me, as if trying to grab at me. Sandhills came and sandhills went. Hills rose up and hills slipped away. Clouds rolled in and clouds rolled out and always the road, always the road, always the road, always the road.”

Davidson’s detailed description of her time walking through the desert alone captures the effects of solitude on the human psyche. Davidson uses spare language, hyperbole, and repetition to convey her distinct experience. She says that each day felt like a “thousand years” or an “aeon”—intervals of time that far exceed the actual length of her time on the road but convey her feelings of disorientation and overwhelm. Her use of cyclical language such as “came and went” or “rolled in and rolled out” points to the repetitive patterns of nature and time. The repetition of “always the road” conveys the endless feeling of her journey. Because she was on her own, she had no one to ground her. She had only the land to track her movements.

“‘Everything will be OK.’ Panic melted and I laughed at myself for being so absurd, an effect of emotional and physical exhaustion, that was all it was. I was all right. I was going to be all right. The threads bound together and I touched Diggity. ‘Diggity’s here, it’s OK.’”

In this scene, Davidson captures how she was able to stave off her fear by talking to herself and relying on her dog for comfort, emphasizing her determination and resilience. She talks herself out of her own panic, reassuring herself with calming words and laughter. She also physically holds onto Diggity—reiterating the importance of the dog’s companionship to Davidson’s survival.

“In the Pitjantjara case, the old men and women set the issue of freehold and leasehold aside as a triviality and it is doubtful whether the government bureaucrats had the slightest idea why. To those old people, the concept of owning land was far more impossible than owning a star or an allotment of air would be to us.”

Throughout the memoir, Davidson incorporates explanations of and meditations on Aboriginal culture. In this passage, she muses on the Pitjantjara regard for the natural world—viewpoints she gradually adopts as her own. This passage emphasizes the transformative power of the natural world. Over time, Davidson learns how to see the land as its own entity, deconstructing her human-centric lens on the world.

“Time melted—became meaningless. I don’t think I have ever felt so good in my entire life. He made me notice things I had not noticed before—noises, tracks. And I began to see how it all fitted together. The land was not wild but tame, bountiful, benign, giving, as long as you knew how to see it, how to be part of it.”

Davidson’s reflections on the weeks she spent with Eddie, emphasize the ways his Aboriginal worldview changed how she saw time, nature, and herself. Spending time with Eddie helped her to let go of schedules, time, and order, and to live in the present in a more intuitive way. The passage shows how spending time in nature changes the individual’s perspective—one of the central goals of Davidson’s journey.

“What I’m trying to say is, when you walk on, sleep on, stand on, defecate on, wallow in, get covered in, and eat the dirt around you, and when there is no one to remind you what society’s rules are, and nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be prepared for some startling changes. And just as Aborigines seem to be in perfect rapport with themselves and their country, so the embryonic beginnings of that rapport were happening to me. I loved it.”

Davidson’s use of language in this passage enacts her evolving regard for the natural world. She uses parallel structure and repetition to convey her deep communion with the land. The syntactic cadence of “walk on, sleep on, stand on, defecate on, wallow in, get covered in, and eat” mimics the rhythm of walking—and sonically mirrors Davidson’s physical experience in the desert. This passage reiterates how Davidson’s immersion in the natural world remakes her from her “embryonic beginnings” and opens her heart and spirit in unexpected ways.

“It was the most honest hour of unselfconscious fun I had ever had. Most of us, I am sure, have forgotten how to play. We’ve made up games instead. And competition is the force that holds these games together. The desire to win, to beat someone else, has supplanted play—the doing of something just for itself.”

The image of Davidson playing with her camels and dog affects childlike freedom—something Davidson hopes to achieve when she first sets out into the desert. This passage toggles between the descriptive and the reflective. Davidson uses her own experience to create a sociopolitical commentary, suggesting that her desert journey does not exist in a vacuum and provides insight into restrictive social models of behavior.

“I FEEL GREAT. Life’s so joyous, so sad, so ephemeral, so crazy, so meaningless, so goddam funny. What’s wrong with me that I feel this good? Have I gone bush-crazy? Am I moonstruck? Probably both and I don’t care. This is paradise, and I wish I could give you some.”

Davidson excerpts a letter she wrote to her friend Steve to capture the exact texture of her solo ventures through the desert. The buoyant, unbridled tone of the letter provides a picture of who Davidson was at the time it was written. The letter also invites the reader into an intimate and private moment from Davidson’s experience and reiterates how being on her own contributed to her self-discovery.

“I didn’t bury her. But I said goodbye to a creature I had loved unconditionally, without question. I said my goodbyes and my thank-yous and I wept for the first time and covered the body with a handful of fallen leaves. I walked out into the morning and felt nothing. I was numb, empty. All I knew was I mustn’t stop walking.”

Diggity’s death marks a turning point in Davidson’s arc. Losing Diggity devastates Davidson and leads her into a period of despair she almost doesn’t survive. As a result of the growth she’s experienced on her journey, Davidson moves through her grief and celebrates Diggity’s life. Rather than giving in to her despair, Davidson allows Diggity’s death to teach her about the fragility of life and the value of companionship.

“But worse than all that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything.”

Davidson’s encounter with the journalists causes her to reflect on her reasons for taking the journey, forcing her to reckon with her motives and clarify her goals. Davidson feels furious that the journalists have represented her as “a mythical being,” because the whole point of her trip is to prove that any person (particularly any woman) can take control of her life if she decides to—a goal that reinforces the memoir’s feminist lens.

“As I look back on the trip now, as I try to sort out fact from fiction, try to remember how I felt at that particular time, or during that particular incident, try to relive those memories that have been buried so deep, and distorted so ruthlessly, there is one clear fact that emerges from the quagmire. The trip was easy.”

Davidson uses a reflective tone as she concludes the final chapter of her memoir, acknowledging the complex nature of reliving an experience through writing. She admits that it was hard for her to remember the exact tenor of her experience, as her memories blurred with fiction and dreams. She notes that the trip wasn’t as difficult as anticipated—framing that reiterates Davidson’s overarching argument that any woman is capable of taking risks and remaking her life, pushing back against a portrayal of herself as mythical or exceptional.