Tracks

Five stars for the writing. Especially her descriptions of the effects a vast desert can have on a person traversing it slowly, and her criticism of the abuse and racism towards the indigenous population.

There is a big downside to this book though: the treatment of animals. It actually makes it hard to read sometimes. You keep wondering how she's able to, since she obviously cherishes them a lot. Some examples as a warning:

"He brought out all those instruments of torture. A cattle prod throws a huge number of volts, and this I pressed into [the camel]'s snapping lips while I beat him as hard as I could across the back of the head with the hobble chain."

"I had him tied to the tree by the legs now and I only hoped that all of it would hold. I then proceeded to bash that creature over the back of the neck with the wood, until it snapped, and then with the iron bar."

"[the camel]'s eyes had rolled with fear and I had to talk to him and pacify him until I knew he trusted me and wouldn't kick. [...] I found a tree a little further on, and beat the living daylights out of him."

Tracks has been sitting on my TBR mountain
for over a year; I finally decided to start
it yesterday when a book, From Alice to
Ocean: Alone Across the Outback, arrived
from the library. From Alice is composed
of pictures taken by National Geographic
photographer Rick Smolan accompanied by
exerpts from Davidson's book. The pictures
were awesome, but reading Tracks and trying
to keep my place in From Alice was difficult;
the writer and the photographer, though
together for most of the trip, seemed to be
miles apart in recording aspects of the trip
that were intriguing. My favorite part of
Tracks was the leg of the trip in which
Davidson traveled with Aborigine elder Eddie.
Davidson appeared to change dramatically
during the time she spent with Eddie,
becoming a more substantive person.
Overall, I would say that I found Glamour's
assessment of the book (“the women's Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”)
exaggerated, but the book, for me,
provided a fascinating (and safe) look at
a perilous part of the world.

The best thing I loved about this memoir and travelogue is how raw it is. It is not glossed over, it isn't built up to be more than it was intended to be. Robyn's candid recounting of her journey tells it like it is, with all the messy, strange and crazy details along the way. She doubted at times, she both lost and found herself in unexpected ways and she doesn't expect others to either understand or follow in her footsteps. There are nuggets of wisdom and advice littered throughout anyway, whether she intended it or not and if you let it, her story can be more than a feminist tale or a moral lesson, it can imbue the way you look at your life and ways in which you interact with those around you, among so many other little and big things. I don't think even Robyn wants others to pack up and cross a desert literally, but her story does have a way of inspiring you to move, to break free and think beyond the confines of the small world you find yourself and to see the wide world through different eyes and to know it won't be easy or safe when you do.

Robyn Davidson doesn't consider herself incredible or inspirational, although she completed a journey that few other people could have contemplated, let alone completed.

In 1977, from Alice Springs, which is smack bang in the middle of Australia, and is surrounded by deserts, she undertakes an (*almost) solo trek to the Western Australian coast, 1700 miles away, accompanied by her four camels. I say almost, because she is visited periodically by a photographer to capture images of her journey for National Geographic, and is accompanied by an Aboriginal elder for a part of the journey.

This books is divided into four parts. The first part describes Robyn's arrival in the Alice, and her trials and tribulations around trying to get work, make money, and learn enough about camels to even consider her journey. This was difficult process for her, low paid work, sometimes on a camel station with a strange overbearing man named Kurt, who despite his shortcomings, and underhand dealings with verbal contracts, taught her a lot about camels.
After writing to them on a drunken whim, National Geographic agree to partially finance her trip in return for the story, and the photographs. This gives Robyn the final cash to purchase what she needs to make a serious start to the journey.

The second part of the book covers her travelling as a trial, the first part of the trip, to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and on to Docker, an Aboriginal settlement. This is a difficult time, and a steep learning curve for Robyn. It is at Docker that she meets up with Mr Eddie, the Aboriginal elder who accompanies her for a part of her journey, and shares a lot of Aboriginal knowledge with her in the third part of the book, which chronicles their journey as far as Warburton, where Eddie heads back East.

The final part of the book is Robyn's final leg from Warburton to the coast.

This was a fascinating read for me. As well as being an excellent story of a young woman who, despite some major misgivings about her own mental state, is driven and incredibly mentally strong; it is also a covers a lot of ground with the historic and current (of the time) mistreatment and human rights abuses of the Aboriginal people, as well as extolling some of their amazing culture. As you can imagine, it is one sided commentary, but I don't doubt its accuracy.

For me, the balance is all perfect. The balance between preparation and journey; the balance between the amount of history and political treatment of the Aboriginal people interspersed with the time Robyn spends with Mr Eddie and his compatriots; the balance between the authors internal thoughts and her physical journey. In another book by Robyn Davidson, [b:Desert Places|639361|Desert Places|Robyn Davidson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387707951l/639361._SY75_.jpg|625575], for me she missed the balance, and shared way too many of her impulsive thoughts that were reversed the following day, which made that book only 3 stars. .

So in summary, no hesitation with five stars for me.

Incidentally, I happened to stumble across the film made of this story recently. Despite missing the start and the end, there were some fairly obvious rearrangements of the timelines (taking some of the events of her work on the stations and experiences in learning, and showed them as part of her journey), but the story was largely authentic.