Robyn Davidson - Davidson in tilly hat with her camels carrying luggage behind her along a dirt road in Western Australia.

In 1975 Robyn Davidson arrived in Alice Springs with a dog, AUS 6 dollar, a ‘suitcase full of inappropriate clothes’ and the ‘lunatic idea’ of training a team of camels for a 2,740km (1,700 mile) trek from Australia’s central desert to the shores of the Indian Ocean. For two years she worked and trained on the local camel farms, scrimping and saving for her journey, eventually accepting sponsorship from National Geographic to purchase the supplies and equipment she needed to embark on a journey through one of the most inhospitable places on planet Earth.

Opposite top Wherever Davidson and her camel train went, the local indigenous children greeted them with tremendous excitement.

Opposite bottom left After making camp Davidson would drift off to sleep listening to teaching tapes on her portable cassette player that helped her to learn Pitjantjatjara, the local indigenous dialect.

Opposite bottom right Davidson, lying between two camels, reading a paperback. Just one of the many photographs taken by National Geographic cameraman Rick Smolan.

Davidson nuzzling Zelly while she drinks from a metal bucket.

After finishing at her girls’ boarding school in Brisbane, Robyn Davidson lived a bohemian life in Sydney, quitting university, she worked as a blackjack dealer in an illegal gambling den and as a part-time artist’s model. Before she reached the outback she had ‘never held a hammer … mended a sock, changed a tyre, or used a screwdriver’, and yet nothing would shake her from her grand plan to walk halfway across Australia.

Robyn Davidson heads into the outback with her four camels, her faithful dog Diggity and 680kg of equipment for her 2,736km trek across Western Australia.

In March 1977, aged twenty-six years old, Davidson set out on the first leg of her life-changing journey from Glen Helen camp, 100km (60 miles) west of Alice Springs, with her team of four camels, her faithful dog Diggity and 680kg (1,500lb) of equipment and provisions loaded onto three steelframed saddles cushioned with leather pads stuffed with straw.