Robyn Davidson

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Robyn Davidson (born September 6, 1950) is an Australian writer best known for a book and CD-ROM about a 1,700-mile trek across the deserts of west Australia.

Born in Miles, Queensland, she went to a girls' boarding school, and moved to Alice Springs in the 1970s.

After an exploration of the Northern Territory and Western Australia with her dog Diggity and some camels.She has 4 camels: Dookie was a large male, Bub was a smaller male, Zelieka was a wild female, and last but not least, was Goliath, who was Zelieka's son. She wrote a book about it called Tracks (Random House, 1980) The book had photos by Rick Smolan, who came on the trip because he had an assignment for National Geographic. Later he made it into a CD-ROM called From Alice to Ocean, one of the first interactive story-and-photo CDs ever made for the general public.

In 1998, Davidson wrote Desert Places, a book about a nomadic tribe in India (the Rabari). This book was also lavishly illustrated.

In 2006, Davidson contributed the final Quarterly Essay of the year with No Fixed Address, a work on 'nomads and the fate of the planet'.

She had a three-year relationship with the writer Salman Rushdie after meeting him in 1984 in Australia.

Davidson is the subject of a song written by Irish folk singer and song writer, Mick Hanley. The song, Crusader was recorded by Mary Black on her 1983 self titled album.