People like Robyn Davidson

Robyn Davidson (born 6 September 1950) is an Australian writer best known for her book Tracks, about her 1,700-mile trek across the deserts of Western Australia using camels. Her career of travelling and writing about her travels has spanned 40 years.

Robyn Davidson was born at Stanley Park, a cattle station in Miles, Queensland, the second of two girls. Her mother died by suicide when Davidson was 11, and she was largely raised by her father's unmarried sister, Gillian. She went to a girls' boarding school in Brisbane. She received a music scholarship but did not take it up. In Brisbane, Davidson shared a house with biologists and studied zoology. In 1968, aged 18, she went to Sydney and later lived a bohemian life in a Sydney Push household at Paddington, while working as a card-dealer at an illegal gambling house.