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National Geographic: The film to the book: Interview and clips

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National Geographic: The film to the book: Interview and clips

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In 1977 photographer Rick Smolan was traveling in Australia on assignment for Time magazine when he encountered an angry woman in the small town of Alice Springs. Little did he know that 37 years later their story would be dramatized by movie stars.

"I was sent to do a story on Aborigines," Smolan says. "I walked out of my hotel, and I looked up and saw Robyn washing the windows. I took some pictures and she got really pissed off and started yelling at me: 'Put your f--g cameras down!' I went to explain what I was doing, and she said, 'Oh, you're American...What are you, some kind of journalistic parasite here photographing the Aborigines?'"

The woman was Robyn Davidson-the so-called "camel-lady" who undertook a 1,700-mile trek from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean on foot with four camels and a dog as her companions. "TRACKS" is the movie version of her epic journey and evolving relationship with Smolan.

When Davidson embarked on her ambitious walk across the Australian Outback she didn't think it was that big of a deal. She didn't tell anybody why she was going, and she mostly wanted to be left alone. But she also needed money, so Smolan helped introduce her to editors at National Geographic who offered funding in exchange for her story. In turn, 28-year-old Smolan was assigned to photograph her trip for the magazine. Davidson just wished he would go away.

"She told me 'I only want you to come out once,' and I said 'No, I have to come a number of times,'" says Smolan. The problem was, although Davidson had been training her camels and preparing for the trip for years, Smolan had no experience in the outback.

"I went to Alice Springs and bought way too much stuff. I was such a rube. I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't even a boy scout," Smolan cheerfully recounted. "My friends in New York thought it was really funny that I was assigned to the outback. I was so completely clueless."

Over Davidson's nine-month trek, Smolan visited her five times. While she initially resisted his presence, eventually they became friends, then started a brief romance. Smolan didn't tell his editors about the affair-the relationship would have been frowned upon. But as he continued to document Davidson's journey he became an inextricable part of her story.

"I had to decide whether my allegiances were with her or the Geographic," says Smolan. "Even with her fierceness there was something about her that was very vulnerable. I felt very protective of her, even though she didn't want to be protected. Every time I left her, I wondered if it was the last time I would ever see her again. She could have died out there."

Along her trek, Davidson suffered multiple hardships, including dehydration, sick camels, the poisoning of her beloved dog, and intrusions by curious people who would simply not leave her alone. At one point, when Smolan heard a rumor that she was lost in the desert, he high-tailed it from Asia to Australia to track her down, unwittingly leading a mob of other frenzied journalists along with him. Davidson was furious.

She eventually made it to the Indian Ocean where she took her camels for a triumphant swim. It was the end of her physical journey, but the beginning of her sharing her story with the world-first in the 1978 National Geographic article, and later in her best-selling memoir called TRACKS.

When the story was published, Davidson told Smolan she hated the photos in the magazine, and she was dissatisfied with the editing of the piece.

"I think she didn't like the pictures because she thought [they were] my experience, not hers," says Smolan. "In a way, it's true, because I was only there for portions of the trip. I wasn't there for the moments of panic. But now, with the passage of time, Robyn loves the photos."

The images from 1977 have a timeless, cinematic quality to them. The light is golden. The camels are dusty. Davidson's face is streaked with dirt. You can almost smell the campfires, imagine the silence, and conjure both the difficulty and the romance of the trek.

"I used to develop the film myself in Sydney or Melbourne to show her. And the more beautiful I made her look the more she hated them," Smolan says. "You made me look like a goddamn model," she told him.

"I got in huge trouble with the Geographic because you weren't supposed to develop your own film," he continued. "But one of the challenges was that she didn't wear clothes a lot and I didn't want to send pictures of her naked."

Smolan later published more photos from the trip in his 1992 book From Alice to Ocean. Those images helped set the stage for the film version of "TRACKS," starring Mia Wasikowska as Davidson, and Adam Driver as Smolan. "They used the book to set the color palate and tone [of the film]," he says.

Smolan and Davidson both traveled to Australia to spend time on the set.

"It was very surreal to watch people wearing our clothes, dressed up like us-the whole thing was very surreal. I hadn't been back there since the trip. It's completely the same," says Smolan.

He says he was pleased the filmmakers stayed true to the details of the journey, including the mystery of Davidson's motivations for her trip, as well as the nuances of their relationship.

"[The movie makes] her coldness and nastiness, and my goofiness, very extreme, but I think they did a good job capturing the friendship. When you go through something like that with someone- something that is so emotionally intense-a friendship lasts a really long time," Smolan says. "She asked me whether I wondered what would've happened if we'd stayed together-and I said we'd probably be divorced and hate each other now."

Instead, the two have remained friends. Smolan is married with two children, and has published a series of photo books with his wife, Jennifer Erwitt. He reflects that traveling with Davidson-and having to make tough choices about covering and becoming involved in her story-ultimately changed his career.

"[Davidson] asked me after the trip was over, 'Are you going back to being a prostitute?' Her point was that I was always going to be a cog in someone else's machine."

He says her scorn eventually led him to stop taking assignments and start producing his own photo books, including the wildly successful "Day in the Life" series, which have sold millions of copies worldwide.

He adds that part of the modern day appeal of Davidson's tale is that it would be almost impossible to do again today. "The reason the filmmakers made the film is because it's a burden that we can't ever untether ourselves from civilization now. They are hoping [people] will find the story interesting because it's about trying to find yourself."

Watch Rick Smolan talk live at National Geographic about his experiences in Australia with Robyn Davidson.
Smolan is co-creator of the best-selling "A Day in the Life" series, which has sold more than three-million copies worldwide. Other projects, among many, include America at Home, America 24/7, The Human Face of Big Data, and The Obama Time Capsule. He is CEO of Against All Odds Productions, and lives in New York with his wife and collaborator Jennifer Erwitt.

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Rick Smolan's Trek with TRACKS, from Australian Outback to Silver Screen

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In 1977 photographer Rick Smolan was traveling in Australia on assignment for Time magazine when he encountered an angry woman in the small town of Alice Springs. Little did he know that 37 years later their story would be dramatized by movie stars. "I was sent to do a story on Aborigines," Smolan says.

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Inside Tracks: Robyn Davidson: Interview

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Inside Tracks: Robyn Davidson: Interview

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In March 1977, Robyn Davidson set out with four camels and a dog from Glen Helen, Australia, on a quest to cross more than 27,000 kilometers of the Australian desert to reach the Indian Ocean.

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Interview with Robyn Davidson: Booktopia

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Interview with Robyn Davidson: Booktopia

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Booktopia Presents: Tracks by Robyn Davidson (Interview with Caroline Baum)

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The international bestseller of one woman's solo trek across 1,700 miles of Australian Outback. 'I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.' So begins Robyn Davidson's perilous journey through some of the harshest spaces of the world.

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Stories in Robyn Davidson include: 16 striking photos of one woman's 2,835km trek across the Australian outback...

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Robyn Davidson, the ‘Camel Lady’.

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Australian Screen interview with author: Link included

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Australian Screen interview with author: Link included

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2017 Tracks Interview with author Link to Australian Screen

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Tracks Into the Wild The Road Less Travelled RMM

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Robyn Davidson, a young woman who had "never changed a light-bulb, sewn a dress, mended a sock, changed a tyre, or used a screwdriver" [p. 93], took a train to Alice Springs in central Australia with six dollars in her pocket and a wildly unrealistic ambition: to capture wild camels, train them, and then cross the great desert of Western Australia with them.

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In 1977 photographer Rick Smolan was traveling in Australia on assignment for Time magazine when he encountered an angry woman in the small town of Alice Springs. Little did he know that 37 years later their story would be dramatized by movie stars.

"I was sent to do a story on Aborigines," Smolan says. "I walked out of my hotel, and I looked up and saw Robyn washing the windows. I took some pictures and she got really pissed off and started yelling at me: 'Put your f--g cameras down!' I went to explain what I was doing, and she said, 'Oh, you're American...What are you, some kind of journalistic parasite here photographing the Aborigines?'"

The woman was Robyn Davidson-the so-called "camel-lady" who undertook a 1,700-mile trek from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean on foot with four camels and a dog as her companions. "TRACKS" is the movie version of her epic journey and evolving relationship with Smolan.

When Davidson embarked on her ambitious walk across the Australian Outback she didn't think it was that big of a deal. She didn't tell anybody why she was going, and she mostly wanted to be left alone. But she also needed money, so Smolan helped introduce her to editors at National Geographic who offered funding in exchange for her story. In turn, 28-year-old Smolan was assigned to photograph her trip for the magazine. Davidson just wished he would go away.

"She told me 'I only want you to come out once,' and I said 'No, I have to come a number of times,'" says Smolan. The problem was, although Davidson had been training her camels and preparing for the trip for years, Smolan had no experience in the outback.

"I went to Alice Springs and bought way too much stuff. I was such a rube. I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't even a boy scout," Smolan cheerfully recounted. "My friends in New York thought it was really funny that I was assigned to the outback. I was so completely clueless."

Over Davidson's nine-month trek, Smolan visited her five times. While she initially resisted his presence, eventually they became friends, then started a brief romance. Smolan didn't tell his editors about the affair-the relationship would have been frowned upon. But as he continued to document Davidson's journey he became an inextricable part of her story.

"I had to decide whether my allegiances were with her or the Geographic," says Smolan. "Even with her fierceness there was something about her that was very vulnerable. I felt very protective of her, even though she didn't want to be protected. Every time I left her, I wondered if it was the last time I would ever see her again. She could have died out there."

Along her trek, Davidson suffered multiple hardships, including dehydration, sick camels, the poisoning of her beloved dog, and intrusions by curious people who would simply not leave her alone. At one point, when Smolan heard a rumor that she was lost in the desert, he high-tailed it from Asia to Australia to track her down, unwittingly leading a mob of other frenzied journalists along with him. Davidson was furious.

She eventually made it to the Indian Ocean where she took her camels for a triumphant swim. It was the end of her physical journey, but the beginning of her sharing her story with the world-first in the 1978 National Geographic article, and later in her best-selling memoir called TRACKS.

When the story was published, Davidson told Smolan she hated the photos in the magazine, and she was dissatisfied with the editing of the piece.

"I think she didn't like the pictures because she thought [they were] my experience, not hers," says Smolan. "In a way, it's true, because I was only there for portions of the trip. I wasn't there for the moments of panic. But now, with the passage of time, Robyn loves the photos."

The images from 1977 have a timeless, cinematic quality to them. The light is golden. The camels are dusty. Davidson's face is streaked with dirt. You can almost smell the campfires, imagine the silence, and conjure both the difficulty and the romance of the trek.

"I used to develop the film myself in Sydney or Melbourne to show her. And the more beautiful I made her look the more she hated them," Smolan says. "You made me look like a goddamn model," she told him.

"I got in huge trouble with the Geographic because you weren't supposed to develop your own film," he continued. "But one of the challenges was that she didn't wear clothes a lot and I didn't want to send pictures of her naked."

Smolan later published more photos from the trip in his 1992 book From Alice to Ocean. Those images helped set the stage for the film version of "TRACKS," starring Mia Wasikowska as Davidson, and Adam Driver as Smolan. "They used the book to set the color palate and tone [of the film]," he says.

Smolan and Davidson both traveled to Australia to spend time on the set.

"It was very surreal to watch people wearing our clothes, dressed up like us-the whole thing was very surreal. I hadn't been back there since the trip. It's completely the same," says Smolan.

He says he was pleased the filmmakers stayed true to the details of the journey, including the mystery of Davidson's motivations for her trip, as well as the nuances of their relationship.

"[The movie makes] her coldness and nastiness, and my goofiness, very extreme, but I think they did a good job capturing the friendship. When you go through something like that with someone- something that is so emotionally intense-a friendship lasts a really long time," Smolan says. "She asked me whether I wondered what would've happened if we'd stayed together-and I said we'd probably be divorced and hate each other now."

Instead, the two have remained friends. Smolan is married with two children, and has published a series of photo books with his wife, Jennifer Erwitt. He reflects that traveling with Davidson-and having to make tough choices about covering and becoming involved in her story-ultimately changed his career.

"[Davidson] asked me after the trip was over, 'Are you going back to being a prostitute?' Her point was that I was always going to be a cog in someone else's machine."

He says her scorn eventually led him to stop taking assignments and start producing his own photo books, including the wildly successful "Day in the Life" series, which have sold millions of copies worldwide.

He adds that part of the modern day appeal of Davidson's tale is that it would be almost impossible to do again today. "The reason the filmmakers made the film is because it's a burden that we can't ever untether ourselves from civilization now. They are hoping [people] will find the story interesting because it's about trying to find yourself."

Watch Rick Smolan talk live at National Geographic about his experiences in Australia with Robyn Davidson.
Smolan is co-creator of the best-selling "A Day in the Life" series, which has sold more than three-million copies worldwide. Other projects, among many, include America at Home, America 24/7, The Human Face of Big Data, and The Obama Time Capsule. He is CEO of Against All Odds Productions, and lives in New York with his wife and collaborator Jennifer Erwitt.

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Rick Smolan's Trek with TRACKS, from Australian Outback to Silver Screen

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In 1977 photographer Rick Smolan was traveling in Australia on assignment for Time magazine when he encountered an angry woman in the small town of Alice Springs. Little did he know that 37 years later their story would be dramatized by movie stars. "I was sent to do a story on Aborigines," Smolan says.

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Adventurer Robyn Davidson has a most unusual confession for an author.

Unlike the vast majority of writers whose books are made into films, she actually loves the movie that's been made of her bestseller, Tracks.

The film, starring acclaimed young actress Mia Wasikowska, follows Robyn's remarkable solo camel trek across Australia's harsh and unforgiving interior.

In 1977, then 27-year-old Robyn set out on a 2700km journey with four camels and her dog. When she wrote an article about her adventure, it generated so much interest she wrote a book that became an instant bestseller.

Robyn shared her thoughts on the film with Carol Duncan from 1233 ABC Newcastle Afternoons. (listen to attached audio)

"I really like the film and I don't think many writers would say that, they'd always have reservations of some sort," Robyn says.

"So I think I'm tremendously lucky that the film-makers have done such a terrific job, I really think it's a good film."

And Robyn should know, having seen the movie five times at various festivals.

Previous attempts to make the film, including one project that was to star Julia Roberts, fell through.

But the movie that's now been released is attracting rave reviews, especially given the difficulty of documenting a journey that was internal as well as external.

Robyn says she was always very clear that the film wouldn't and couldn't be the same as her book.

"I think a lot of writers are unrealistic about having their books translated into film," she says.

"You can't expect the film to be exactly the same as the book."

The author appreciates that the Tracks film-makers tried to be faithful to the spirit and essence of her book.

Mia's performance particularly impressed Robyn, who describes her as "sensational".

She believes the Aussie actress managed to capture both the vulnerability and "steely determination" of her young self.

Robyn's independence and thirst for adventure inspired a generation of young women when her book came out, and she hopes the movie will have a similar effect on a new generation of girls.

"You really can expand the boundaries of your life and do risky things and prove yourself by doing them," she says.

However she acknowledges that with modern technology, exploration of even the most remote areas is no longer such a solitary prospect.

"It's very, very hard to disappear under the radar now," she says.

"These days it's very hard to detach.

"I try to factor solitude into my life, because more and more that's becoming a very precious and rare commodity."

Tracks is currently showing around Australia.

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newcastle: afternoons tracks movie film robyn davidson author actress mia wasikowska camel trek journey outback desert 1233 abc carol duncan

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Tracks author Robyn Davidson's surprising confession

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Adventurer Robyn Davidson has a most unusual confession for an author. Unlike the vast majority of writers whose books are made into films, she actually loves the movie that's been made of her bestseller, Tracks. The film, starring acclaimed young actress Mia Wasikowska, follows Robyn's remarkable solo camel trek across Australia's harsh and unforgiving interior.

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VATE 2016 Inside Stories Tracks - Into the Wild

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No fixed address by Robyn Davidson

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At the end of Tracks, the book Robyn Davidson wrote about her journey by camel across the Australian desert in 1977, she concluded that "camel trips ... do not begin or end, they merely change form." For the past eight months or so, the trip has taken her to the red carpets of Venice and Telluride rather than the sand of Pipalyatjara and Uluru and the alarming encounters have not been with rogue bull camels or reptiles but with all the crazy hoopla that comes with the promotion of a film based on your own life.

At the end of Tracks, the book Robyn Davidson wrote about her journey by camel across the Australian desert in 1977, she concluded that "camel trips ... do not begin or end, they merely change form." For the past eight months or so, the trip has taken her to the red carpets of Venice and Telluride rather than the sand of Pipalyatjara and Uluru and the alarming encounters have not been with rogue bull camels or reptiles but with all the crazy hoopla that comes with the promotion of a film based on your own life.

Although Tracks was regarded as a spectacular piece of travel writing, it was always much more. It was also about the sexism and racism - specifically affecting Indigenous Australians - the then 26-year-old encountered, and about alienation and how we limit ourselves through fear or insecurity. "Men are men and women are an afterthought," she wrote of her native land, the chaps who mocked her proposed journey were "bigoted and boring" and it was no surprise that some of the world's angriest feminists were antipodeans. Since then, of course, there has been a first, albeit beleaguered, female Australian prime minister. Talking in an east London flat she once called home, I ask how much has changed.
"Every country is sexist and racist, they just have their own versions of it and now I have travelled the world and seen how all men have difficulty with women," says Davidson. "I feel much more tender towards Aussie blokes now. They're usually good company - funny and self-deprecating. Anyway, there's good blokes and bad blokes, and good women and bad women. As for the racism, when I first got back to Australia and saw Samson and Delilah [the 2009 film by the Indigenous Australian director Warwick Thornton], I thought: nothing's changed. But then I thought - there wouldn't have been an Aboriginal film-maker then."

We met more than 30 years ago, through the late photographer Penny Tweedie, around the time that Tracks came out. Soon afterwards, Davidson was off again, travelling across the US on a Harley-Davidson with her then partner, Steve Mark. She seemed unstoppable. There used to be an idle game among us in which people said who they would most like to have with them on a bank robbery and Davidson was always everyone's first choice.

Tracks was originally optioned as a film in the 1980s and made its way through various production companies. "One idea was to make the main character a dotty American secretary who gets a postcard from an uncle in Australia. She's in Central Park with her mother who tells her 'darling, you've just got to go on this walk' and then the mum gets run over by a bus," she says, laughing at the memory. "We used to joke that there would have been tyre marks over the mother's body and then 'TRACKS' coming up on the screen." Unsurprisingly, that version did not fly. There was a big-budget approach, too, with Julia Roberts in the part, but Davidson balked at the idea.

"I had always seen it as an independent film and once it got into Hollywood, any control would be zilch," she says. "But this lot [producer Emile Sherman and director John Curran] were so charming and they were a smaller company and in Australia."

Mia Wasikowska, who plays Davidson, has captured her eerily well. The Australian-born actor's presence eased the journey through the festivals and junkets. "I am fascinated by actors, how they do what they do, and it's clear that this young woman is very intelligent and has a strong inner life - and we had fun together," says Davidson. "We were on the red carpet in Venice - I had no idea that they actually had red carpets, I thought it was just an expression."

Now she is working on her memoir, a perplexing expedition through her life that has been delayed for how many years? "Fifteen - let's say 10, that sounds more respectable." She wrote a beautiful essay for the Telegraph ages ago in which she explained why she would be unable to write the book. As someone remarked at the time, it read like the perfect first chapter, which it now will be. A couple of years ago literary agent David Godwin flew to see her in India to persuade her to finish it.

It is a journey with its own personal sadnesses, which started in a cattle ranch in Queensland before going through the "60s and 70s wild years". After Tracks was published she lived on four continents and had more than 40 addresses. In the early 1980s she moved to London, staying first with Doris Lessing and living for a while in an east London studio flat where we now sit. An Indian landowner and former politician called Narendra Singh Bhati persuaded her to go east, which led to another journey with nomads and camels in north-west India, a tough experience that became a book, Desert Places. Although Bhati died in 2010, she still spends part of the year there and maintains a close - often infuriated - relationship with it, exacerbated by the current elections. "If Modi [of the rightwing Bharatiya Janata party] gets in, it would be a disaster. I find him truly terrifying."

For a while she made a living taking wealthy and sometimes demanding travellers into the Rajasthan desert. Would that make a film? "It would have to be a comedy. You certainly find out how groups function: everyone gets a bit infantilised so, as the guide, you inevitably end up as the mum."

She has a new home near Melbourne to which she will retreat, when the red carpets are rolled up, and face her deadline. Something that is clearly just as daunting to her as Australian dust bowls, blazing suns and spinifex spines.
Topics

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Making Tracks: Robyn Davidson's Australian camel trip on the big screen

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At the end of Tracks, the book Robyn Davidson wrote about her journey by camel across the Australian desert in 1977, she concluded that "camel trips ... do not begin or end, they merely change form."

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Unit of work for Year 10 by Amanda Scott on Tracks by Robyn Davidson.