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Robyn Davidson's perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea began with only four camels and a dog for company. Enduring sweltering heat, fending off poisonous snakes and lecherous men, chasing her camels when they get skittish and nursing them when they are injured, Davidson emerges as an extraordinarily courageous heroine driven by a love of Australia's landscape, an empathy for its indigenous people and a willingness to cast away the trappings of her former identity.

In 1977, while she was still in her twenties, Robyn Davidson set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the sea. The undertaking would make her world-famous. What sets a young woman off on a path like this – thrilling, but often dangerous and lonely? What kept her walking, and what had she left behind her that meant that she could not look back? In Unfinished Woman, Davidson embarks on another journey into uncharted territory: the past.

It'd been a long time since I claimed some solitude in this blessed landscape; since I've done without life's little props. Here I have no friend, no dog, no radio, no clock, no phone, no roof, no body pollutants.

After many thousands of years, the nomads are disappearing, swept away by modernity. Robyn Davidson has spent a good part of her life with nomadic cultures - in Australia, north-west India, Tibet and the Indian Himalayas - and she herself calls three countries home. In the last Quarterly Essay for 2006, she draws on her unique experience to delineate a vanishing way of life. In a time of environmental peril, Davidson argues that the nomadic way with nature offers valuable lessons.

In 1977, Robyn Davidson set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the sea. The undertaking would make her world-famous. What sets a young woman off on a path like this--thrilling, but often dangerous and lonely? What kept her walking, and what had she left behind her that meant that she could not look back? In Unfinished Woman, Davidson embarks on another journey into uncharted territory: the past. In mesmerizing prose, she conjures her childhood in post-war Australia.

A cycling podcast hosted by sports journalist Robyn Davidson. We'll be talking to cyclists, team members, journalists and beyond in the cycling world.Stay groovy!