Alone Across the Outback

Rick Smolan: This sort of underlying message that you're as powerful as you allow yourself to be is one of the things I think has resonated with people for years about Robyn's trip. That she doesn't describe herself as a hero, she doesn't say she's courageous. She actually talks about her fears very openly but she does it anyway, which is I think the thing that people have admired so much about her.

Rick Smolan: I... was given an assignment by Time magazine in 1977, to go to the outback of Australia, and to shoot a cover story about Aborigines. And the writer had already written the story and my job was to go out and illustrate the story that he had written, a wonderful gentleman named Roy Rowan. He had worked with a social worker who had taken him into the Aboriginal camps to get him permission to take photographs. And so I called this woman before I got to Alice Springs, and I said, “Could you also take me out to some of the same places you took the writer?” And she said, “Sure, meet me at this little pub down the street from this hotel,” she suggested I stay at. So, I checked into my hotel, I walked out of the hotel and there washing the window of my hotel was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. And so I took a few photographs, and she got really angry. And she said, “Put your damn cameras down! Who the hell are you?” And I said, “I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to get you upset.” And I left and I then took a turn and went to the place I should've gone in the first place and I met the social worker. And she said, “Well, a group of us who work with Aborigines are going to get together tonight for dinner. You might want to come and meet some of the other social workers, people involved in the Aboriginal Rights Movement,” and so she gave me the address. And of course, who opens the door but the woman who had been washing the windows of the hotel, who was not at all pleased to see me. And she said, you know, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “Well, your friend, Jenny, invited me.” And she said, “You can't photograph my friends.” I said, “Okay,” so... She said, “Put your cameras down!” So I put the cameras, like leave your guns at the door, you know. So... so, I put my cameras down and I walked into this house, which was literally falling apart, there was no back to the house. And in the backyard she had four camels tied up. And I said, “Why do you have camels?” She says, “None of your business.” So... So I found Jenny and said, “Why does she have camels in the backyard?” And she said, “Oh, she's this odd girl that showed up here a year ago. We don't really know where she is from... what she is doing here but she... we bring her food, we come out here and we visit her. We're kind of worried about her, but she has this crazy idea that she is going to walk 2,000 miles from here, Alice Springs, the heart of the desert, through the Gibson Desert, out to the Indian Ocean.” And I said, “Okay, well it's pretty crazy.”

So throughout the week I worked with Jenny, at the end of the week she said, “Robyn wrote to National Geographic a year ago and never got any answer at all. She asked them if they would like, underwrite her trip. And she thought maybe you might know someone there or she could use your name, because she is just so tired of washing windows and waiting on jerks in pubs and...” I said, “She wants to use my name, fine, you know, whatever.” And I thought that would be the end of it, and I flew back to the States. And a week later the phone rings, and it's Bob Gilka, who was then Director of Photography here at the Geographic. He said, “We got this letter from this woman in Australia and she's describing this fascinating idea of crossing the desert with camels and... but you know, we don't want the headline 'National Geographic explorer dies in week two.' You know, in the outback, is she a nutcase, is she for real...” I said, “Well, she is very intense. I've seen her camels, I've seen her maps, I mean... you know, she is very focused.” And he said, “Well, since you guys are such good friends, would you like...” I'm serious. “Would you like to be the photographer that we send out to meet her five times in the desert, to document her trip?” And it's like, I remember having two reactions, which is “This is so cool,” and like, “Oh my God, you know…” Be careful what you wish for.

So, there's always been sort of a mystery to Robyn's trip, which is... why did she do this, why did she want to go on this journey? And a lot of her friends were worried that this was a weird form of suicide. Robyn's mother had died when she was 11-years old, and a lot of her friends thought this was some kind of echo of that. And it was a bizarre form of it. I never thought that, and Robyn certainly doesn't... didn't think that, and doesn't think it. No one at the time knew that she was an unbelievable writer. She is now sort of like the J. D. Salinger of Australia. Everyone reads her book, Tracks, in high school now. It's actually required reading and they have study guides about it.

So, Robyn got funding from National Geographic, and it's funny because they flew me back to Australia, when Bob Gilka interviewed her to make sure that they really wanted to do this. And we went out and had a drink afterwards and after the third drink, she looked at me and said, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “What?” She said, “What are you doing here?” And I thought “Oh my God, the woman is actually really nuts.” And she said, “No, she said like, I've just completely sold out my whole trip.” I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, “I don't want my friends to come, I don't want you coming, and now I've got to write a story for this magazine.” I said, “Robyn, they're across the street at the hotel, go back and tell them you don't want the money. I mean you haven't done anything yet, if you really feel this is something that's going to destroy your trip...” And she said, “I can't, I can't spend another year, you know, doing odd jobs.” And this was sort of her conflict from the beginning, of wanting to do this all by herself but also needing some help, and it's something that sort of went on throughout... the whole trip.

She had this wonderful dog named Diggity, that was her daughter, her companion, her friend. So much of this trip was her relationship with this dog. She said that two years before she came to Alice Springs, she got a job at a hospital as a janitor, basically, you know, emptying out trash bins. And she said, one night, this first week she was working at this hospital, she heard these terrible cries coming from the basement. And she went downstairs and found out they were basically taking strays and doing experiments on these animals. You know testing them for cosmetics, if it burned their eyes and stuff. She said it was just absolutely horrible she couldn't stand it. So the second night she waited until all the other janitors left and she went back in with the keys, opened up all the cages and let all the animals loose, opened up all the doors and one little puppy had been brought in that day, that was Diggity. I have goose bumps telling the story. And, so Diggity became like her companion. And Diggity saved her life so many times during the trip, it was unbelievable. If... if a snake or centipede had crawled into her sleeping bag, Diggity would bark and tell her there is something in the sleeping bag. If she got lost Diggity could lead her back to where she'd left the camels. But one night, it was a full moon, we were by Ayers Rock, called Uluru by the Aborigines. And she was snuggling with Diggity, one of my favorite pictures from the trip. Obviously the Geographic for the most part uses color, so this picture just sat in my archives for years and then this picture just became Robyn's official portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in Australia, which is wonderful. I just... I love the picture of her and Diggity together.

The first time Robyn saw the Rock, I mean, you hear about these things and you think it's like a tourist attraction. But it's actually the middle of the desert. And you realize that this was actually once the bottom of the ocean. Circumference of this is five miles, if you actually ride around the outside of it. But there is a little cave up there at the top. And in the next picture you're going to see... It's Robyn inside that cave.

So, one of the things that was challenging on this trip is that Robyn didn't wear clothes a lot. And... it was challenging for lots of reasons as you can imagine, but... Ah, so, I decided I didn't want to send pictures of Robyn, who I was falling in love with, back to the Geographic, because I just didn't feel comfortable sharing these pictures. So, I would only send the pictures that I wanted the Geographic to see. And the Geographic got really angry at me, because you are not supposed to do that. And I... they basically said, “You're never going to work for us again.” And I was sort of committing professional suicide, because this, you know, I was 28 years old at that point and I was, you know, my loyalties, to be honest, were to Robyn and not to my career, and not to the Geographic. I just felt like, you know, the more the trip went on, the more concerned I was about her, the more fond I was of her, and the more worried I was that something's going to happen to her. Every time I left her... I remember I would look in the rear-view mirror of my car and wonder if that would be the last time I'd ever see her.

She had brought a cassette player with Aboriginal language tapes, to speak Pitjantjatjara. I'm not sure I am saying that correctly. Most tourists, most people that go out there treat Aborigines like they want to learn about them, they are anthropologists. Robyn really wanted to actually... she felt that there was something that they could teach her and I think... She sort of become... became a legend. Whenever I would ask Aborigines, “Have you seen the camel lady?” Which is what they called her, they had such fondness and respect for what she was doing because she was taking the time to slowly travel through the places where they lived. And she wanted to spend time with them and learn from them.

She said that, you know, people... said “wasn't it hard, wasn't it frightening?” and she actually talks about it with a sense of wonder. She said it was so beautiful and so quiet. I remember at night when you looked up at the stars, it was... you know, there was no visual pollution, no traffic lights, there were no street lights, no buildings and so the clarity of the heavens were just amazing there. And she said on one of these trips, and I was actually there when this happened... She was travelling with the camels, she was in a really good mood, everything seemed to be going really, really well. And then it started raining. When it rains camels will stop dead in their tracks, and they won't move because they have no traction. She was trying to get to a place called Docker River, which is about ten miles away from where we were at that point. And so she kept going in the rain, and kind of forcing the camels to walk.

Right after I took this picture, one of her camels, Dookie, fell. And camels are like horses. If they break a leg, you basically have to put them down, because they... it doesn't heal. And he laid on the ground groaning and she thought he had broken his leg. He wouldn't move. It took...for about six hours. So, I drove ahead to the Aboriginal Mission and we called a vet who we actually flew out. The vet said it looked like he had just sprained his leg, but it was going to take six weeks to heal. So, she ends up living at Docker River for six weeks. You know, sort of life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. This ended up becoming a great experience for her because she got to spend time in this one Aboriginal Mission instead of stopping and travelling on. One of the things that was so wonderful about the Aboriginal kids is that they were so excited whenever she showed up in these villages. This is probably one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip. I just love that. You can just see all the body language, all the excitement of the kids. The camel lady is here, the camel lady is here. It's just wonderful. It was nice to see her happy too and the kids really kind of brought her out of herself, in wonderful ways.

I would show up sometimes and I remembering showing up once and she said... “You Americans treat friendship like Valium.” It was like, you know, Really? It's like it's an insult or challenge of the day. Robyn was doing this to herself as well but I thought at a certain point we had sort of gotten over the initial hostility and I said, “Okay, what's that supposed to mean?” She said, “Well, every time I see Americans together, they're all saying, 'Don't worry, everything will be fine. It will all work out'.” And I said, “And that's a bad thing?” She says, “Yeah, because if you care about somebody and they are doing something stupid, if they are marrying the wrong person, they have an abusive boss, they are doing, they are taking drugs, whatever it is, you hit them over the head with a two-by-four. You risk your friendship to be a friend and maybe you lose them as friends.” But, she said, “You are all cowards. Like you won't actually...be friends to each other because you are afraid you'll lose the friendship.” And I... I remember thinking, “Wow, that's... I mean, that's a really interesting thought, I had never, you know...” I said, “You know, you're right,” I mean, I am not speaking for all Americas but I mean... There were so many conversations like that where she had a really different way of like, approaching things.

And it was sort of my year of growing up too. I mean, I was 27, 28 years old, but emotionally, I was like 19 years old. Every girlfriend I had had lasted a week and then, somebody gave me an assignment and I could leave. We'll work it out when I come back and I would never come back. So... You know... this experience with Robyn, who was like so much older and wiser than her 26 years. I mean it was like, literally like, spending time with a really interesting, profound person that wouldn't let you get away with anything. So, I mean, I was constantly having to either defend or think or be challenged, it was just... the whole thing was so fascinating.

So, at one point during the trip... Early in the trip, one morning she woke up and she said, I had this dream about this Aboriginal man that came out of nowhere and travelled with me. And I had a journal, I was keeping a journal throughout the whole trip. And I came back, you know, like the third time out there and she was with this little Aboriginal man. I said, “Who is this?” She said, “This is Mr. Eddie.” And she said, “He came out of nowhere and he is travelling with me.” I said, “Just like your dream.” She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Don't you remember the dream you had at the beginning of the trip?” She says, “I didn't have a dream about...” I showed her in my journal... you dreamt this guy. Mr. Eddie travelled with her for six weeks. He was incredible. He was a tribal elder. He didn't speak a word of English, and travelled with her for six weeks. Came out of nowhere, taught her how to find food in the outback, took her to sacred areas that no one was supposed to go to. Mr. Eddie became one of her most cherished memories of her whole journey.

One day I got a telegram from her, I was in Hong Kong, And the telegram said, “Could you please bring me a rifle?” And it was the same rifle I knew she already had. And the reason is because when male camels are in heat, if you have a female camel, they will kill you to get to your female. So, I said to her when she was telling me about it on the trip, “how would a camel kill you? You know... chew you to death or something?” I am trying to figure out. And she said, “No, actually, it's pretty frightening.” They... you know, camels have necks that are so strong, that... they can lift 15 grown men on their neck. So what a camel will do is come over and knock you over with its neck and it will sit on you and suffocate you. These are very intelligent animals. I mean, it's very interesting that they've actually figured out to kill human beings, right? But when they are in heat, they... they have this bladder that comes out of their mouthand foam and... It's like a lot of animals in heat and if you have a female, they will kill you to get to the female. And if they lure the female off, she is dead. She... These camels carried all of her food, all of her water, all of her gear. So, if they ran away, she was dead out there. So, she actually was attacked at one point, by a group of wild camels. So when I... And she had to kill two of them, which was heartbreaking to herbecause she obviously, you know, she loves animals. So I had this horrible thought, “Oh my God, she's lost her gun somewhere.” So I, you know, when I drove out there, I thought, “My God, I'm going to bring her the gun,” and it turned out it was a gift for Mr. Eddie. She had her gun, she was fine, but Mr. Eddie just loved this gun of hers and so he was so excited when I got out of the car and I had this gun.

On one of the trips I came out, I was sitting by the fire and Robyn said, “When are you going to get here?” And I had come in about four hours before and I was sitting there and I was talking about something I had just done somewhere else and she said... I said, “Excuse me?” She said, “When are you going to get here?” I thought okay now she's actually now flipped out. I said, “Robyn, I am sitting here across the fire from you. Hello!” She said, “No, you're not here!” She said, “You are talking about your Time cover story, where you're going to leave the car in three weeks, did your film get x-rayed...” She said, “You know, you come out here and you spend the entire time talking about something you did or something you're going to do. And if you are going to be here, then God damn it, be here. And don't be lost in your head the whole time.” It's... again it's one of those things where somebody kind of... goes like that. And you go, you know what, how many of you now have looked at people in restaurants, where there is a couple in a restaurant and they are both doing this... And they are talking to everybody except the person they are... with, right? I mean, if... I was going to say, “Robyn, if you thought it was bad back then...” The whole world is now turned to that, but again it was... it was so, not to say refreshing, but it was so... fascinating to have someone constantly call you on things. And you say, “You know what, you're absolutely right. You know, I am totally thinking about what I did or what I am going to do.” It's sort of be here now, it's that old Zen-kinda thing, right?

So, as I said before, every time I left her I always worried that... each time I left her I'd look in the rear-view mirror as I drove away and wonder if that would be my last memory of her or something terrible would happen to her out there. So... I was sitting in Hong Kong one day and a writer, I was working with a writer named Richard Bernstein from New York Times and he was at breakfast, I met him for breakfast. And I walked into the Hilton Hotel and he said, “You better sit down.” And I said, “What?” He said, “Just sit down.” So, I sit down, he is really pale looking and he hands me the local paper and the paper says, “Mysterious 'Camel Lady' Missing in Gibson Desert, Desperate Search Underway.” And I go completely cold, “Oh my God, this... it's happened.” You know, the thing I was most afraid of.

So, I rented a plane, I flew out to this little desert town near where I thought I was going to meet her the next time, and there were journalists, there were trackers, there were helicopters, there were like 80 paparazzi out there. And, I... was so flummoxed and so upset and so freaked out that I... it never occurred to me that I was leading all of them to her. I assumed she was dead. So, I got my car, I drove to where she would have been if every... if she had been on schedule and there she was. And I now have all these guys and cars following me. With film crews and... And before I can say a word, they are thrusting the newspapers in her face, with my pictures on the cover. And you know the whole time... You know, this is what they thought the camel lady looked like, by the way. So, before I can say a word to her, I mean, my first thought is she is going to think I've sold her out. You know, because I always worried that she thought that I was... that... my career came first, the Geographic came first and...

You know, I finally got her away from them and we were trying to figure out what happened, likewhy did people think you were missing. I said, “Has anything happened, I mean, what would have done this?” And she said, “Oh my God!” I said, “What?” And she said, “I know what happened.” I said, “What?” She said, “Two weeks ago, this guy shows up in the middle of the night in a racing car.” I said, “What?” I thought she really has gone nuts, right? She said, “No, no, in the middle of the night, I hear this motor. I see these lights coming towards me. I hadn't seen anybody for like three weeks. And this guy screeches up with a racing car, with big fat tires. And she said his pupils were the size of pinpricks. This guy was so obviously on speed or something,” And she said, “He hit on me. And she told him to piss off and he drove to Sydney.” And she said, “He was breaking the world record of driving from one side of Australia to the other.” And we found out that he had a press conference in Sydney and one of the journalists said, “What was the most interesting thing about you breaking the world's record of driving from one side of Australia to the other?” And he said, “Oh, I spent a romantic night in the moonlight with a naked camel lady.” So, all of a sudden they have made up this story of this naked camel lady in the moonlight in the desert with a racing car driver. She knew nothing about this. And so all these people were out there they had made up this story that she was missing.

She was never missing and then like, “what do you do?” Now you've got 80 people in the desert like, “how do you hide, how do you get rid of them?” So, one night I said to her... After everybody goes to sleep, get in my car and hide, like, you know, in the back seat. And I am going to tell the guys I am going for beer. And so, I basically we drove to the next town. Her camels were fine because they are camels, they can survive for three or four days without water. And we went to town and I had one of my friends send a telegram saying that Robyn has decided to call the trip off because of all the journalists. And that she is sending a truck to pick up the camels. And basically all the guys gave up and they left. We waited three days, we didn't come back for three days. Their budgets ran out. Basically there is nothing to do out there. So, it's sort of a funny scene. This is when she is looking at the newspapers with pictures of herself. It's just insane. They were even doing cartoons about her.

I am not going to give you all the ins-and-outs of the trip. She had an unbelievable experience but she finally did make it to the ocean. It took her nine months, originally it was supposed to be a six month trip. The day before we got to the ocean she said, “I don't want you there when I get to the ocean. I really, just need to be by myself.” I said, “Robyn, I have to be there.” So I managed to talk her into it and now she loves these pictures. She took the camels into the water. They thought this was like the biggest drinking fountain they had ever seen. They didn't like the salt water very much.

This sort of underlying message that you are as powerful as you allow yourself to be is one of the things I think has resonated with people for years about Robyn's trip. That she doesn't describe herself as a hero, she doesn't say she is courageous. She actually talks about her fears very openly but she does it anyway, which is I think the thing that people have admired so much about her. One of things I think that stunned everybody at the end of the trip was that she decided to write a book about it. And I think to everybody's astonishment the book resonated with people all over the world. So the story was, this was commissioned by and for National Geographic. After it ran in the Geographic many other magazines around the world picked it up, I think there was over a 100 publications. They told the story in many, many different languages. Tracks has now been published in 18 languages. It's sold over a million copies. As I said, it's sort of a cult book in certain places in the world. I think one of the strangest things, it was the most stolen book the year it was published in Australia. I don't know how they determine that. And I don't know why it's a sort of an odd honor to win. I am sure the booksellers are really happy about that.

So about every seven years I get a call from somebody in Hollywood saying we are doing this movie and can we talk to you about Robyn and what it was like to be there. And I'd go out and have these meetings and nothing would ever happen. So, when these guys called this time saying we're making the movie. It was sort of like, you know, crying wolf, okay, been there done that 4,000 times already. They said, “No, we've actually cast this wonderful young actress Mia Wasikowska.” So this is a little trailer for the movie and I want to just quickly show you, kind of, some of the scenes that they built on the still photographs.

Dear Sir I am planning to walk across the Australian Desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean, a distance of 2,000 miles. And when people ask me why I am doing it, my usual answer is, 'why not?' Your plan is ridiculous. You must be mad, girlie. You know it's about 2,000 miles, six months of hard walkin'. You want to die out there or something? Leave us alone! Go away! I am so alone. We all are.

Thank you all very much. Thank you.