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

Biography, Travel Literature, Memoir

The book is set in 1977 in the northern and western parts of Australia.

Narrated in first-person from the perspective of Robyn.

Earnest, Honest, Desolate, Determined

The protagonist is Robyn Davidson and the antagonist is the 1,700 miles trek across the treacherous deserts.

Robyn embarks on 1,700 miles solo trek of the Australian outback which involves overcoming the tribulations of the journey itself and the ill-disposed human encounters.

This memoir does not have a clear climax.

“A freezing wind whipped grit down the platform as I stood shivering, holding warm dog flesh, and wondering what foolishness had brought me to this eerie, empty train station in the centre of nowhere.”

This statement from the first chapter foreshadows the wearisome journey and the isolation and reluctance that occasionally hounds Robyn.

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Robyn alludes to the mistreatment of the Aboriginal tribes in the Australian outback from her encounters with the natives.

“Hordes of dead insects clustered in the arcing street lights, and four-wheel-drive vehicles spattered in red dirt, with only two spots swept clean by the windscreen wipers, rattled intermittently through the cement and bitumen town. This grey, cream and hospital-green shopping area gradually gave way to sprawling suburbia until it was stopped short by the great perpendicular red face of the MacDonnell Ranges which border the southern side of town, and run unbroken, but for a few spectacular gorges, east and west for several hundred miles.”

The paradox is the sublime yet hostile nature of the outback in terms of its vastness and the social dynamic in the rural areas.

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“… strange young man who felt awkward and hid behind Nikons”

Robyn personifies her dog and camels.