The Language of the Earth : the Australian Desert in Robyn Davidson's Tracks

Robyn Davidson’s travel account Tracks, which documents her crossing of the Australian desert in 1977, was published in 1980 and includes feminist, environmentalist and ethnic issues. At the age of 27, Davidson travelled from Alice Springs across 2,700 kilometres of Australian desert to the Indian Ocean, alone with her dog and four camels. For Davidson, a white Australian woman, encountering Aboriginal territory and culture means, on the one hand, discovering her freedom and, on the other, understanding the rhythms and traditions of her home country, its landscapes and also its contradictions. Not only is Davidson’s journey an enterprise on the footsteps of the Victorian explorers, but it is also a way to find fulfillment in natural environment. Davidson’s journey and its textualization develop an interplay between inside and outside, possession and alienation; most importantly, the woman traveller becomes part of the landscape and her account lets nature speak: the language of the Australian earth is thus conveyed through its different tracks.