Tracks

The story of Robyn Davidson’s trek across the outback is a true-life legend in its native Australia, but only now reaches the screen in this luscious adaptation with a starring role for Australian Mia Wasikowska .

Accompanied only by her dog, Diggity, and four unpredictable camels, Davidson walked 1,700 miles across the desert of western Australia from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean, journeying across vast sandy wastelands over nine months in 1977. The story made the cover of National Geographic at the time, later extended into a memoir by Davidson herself, with the 27-year-old suffering through 50°C heat, vast expanses without water, and even bumping into native Australians, who called her "the camel lady".

Wasikowska  delivers her most nuanced performance to date as Davidson, tough in the face of adversity but sensitive to her fragile but deadly environment. Alongside Adam Driver, reportedly the villain in the  new  Star Wars  film, appears as Rick Smolan, the National Geographic photographer who captured her journey in stunning pictures.

Director  John Curran  is a superb photographer of the desert, and the film, which premiered at the Venice film festival, has elements of Nicolas Roeg's   Walkabout   in its visual beauty and warmth towards the typically harsh Australian outback.

Alice Springs, one of the most remote cities in the world, was not an easy place for a young, intelligent city girl in the 1970s with an ambition to cross a desert many in which many had died. Davidson spent two years acclimatising to the heat while learning to train feral camels (a million live in Australia, the largest population in the world) meeting photographer Rick Smolan, who helped fund the trip through his stunning photos for National Geographic.