Customer Reviews

From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback

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I bought this book while on a visit to Australia in 1990 and read it on the flight home! I was completely entranced by this woman's tenacity and determination to complete her often difficult but life expanding trek ALL ALONE! I had lost this book in a fire in 1993 and felt like I had lost a friend - I am soooo happy to see it is back in print! The incredible photos that accompany the journey are worth every penny!

I bougt this book in Italy and I knew a little part of Australia. Buy it, you will found marvellous photos in the book and cd-rom also! FANTASTIC.

Great photography, great interactivity... check it out

The combination is a winner because of:
* the stunning page and a half photo spreads of Australian desert and scenes showing Robyn's trek with the camels
* engaging narration by Robyn that shows you the beauty, fear, boredom, and other feelings that accompany her on the months of solitude crossing 1700 miles of outback Australia
The photographer represented National Geographic, and the photos have that look the magazine readers expect. Interesting panoramas, the light playing on the spinifex, the wrinkled face of an Aboriginal tracker, the otherworldly red dirt, the camels silhouetted against the skyline.
Robyn represented only herself and undertook the trek for reasons even she did not understand. Seeing her develop and expand her thinking during the days and weeks and months on the track makes this a fascinating book.

Although large in size, and filled with breathtaking photographs, this book includes so much more than the regular "picture book". Robyn's thoughtful words make you feel as if you are traveling right along with her and her famous camels. The story is engaging and heart-wrenching; and the reader runs through the same emotions that Robyn feels at each leg of the journey, from the tragedy of loss to the jubilation of completion.

Beautiful and introspective - and very highly recommended.

I first saw a picture or two on some program to download desktop photos. I followed some info cuz I was captivated by the Alice pictures. I discovered Robyn's journey, story and this story book. I considered buying a used one, but decided to get a new one. I just love the whole of it and so appreciate the author not only taking the journey but sharing it with the rest of us. Even if some of the sharing was against her original plans. Thanks Robyn. Your journey touches deeply in inexplicable ways.

From Alice to Ocean is a book of the phenomenal photographs taken by Rick Smolan (of National Geographic) of Robyn Davidson's incredible 1700 mile walk, alone across the Australian outback with four camels and a dog in the mid 1970's. The amazing full length written account is available in Robyn's small riviting paperback entitled Tracks. A good deal of her compelling writing accompanies the photos in From Alice to Ocean, published 16 years (1992) after her remarkable trek. Interesting to note: From Alice to Ocean was the first photography book ever published on a MAC computer. The result was, and still is, nothing short of spectacular. Every photo is world class and captures part of a land that is seen only by the Aboriginies who travel through.

Interestingly Robyn felt she had sold herself out after more than two years struggling working for fierce camel owners to earn enough money to buy her camels, when she accepted a grant from National Geographic for her story. There was a stipulation that a photographer be flown in every few weeks to document her trip. In this case her loss of privacy is our gain. And in some instances hers, when on the journey she requests that a rifle like the one she carried be brought to the next drop off point, to give to Mr Eddie, an elderly Aboriginal tribesman who walked with her for several weeks (a companion in his seventies she thought would slow her down but who in fact she struggled to keep pace with).

The magnitude of the journey, Robyn's eloquent account and the gorgeous photography make a remarkable book. No one will be disappointed with this rare collectors item and I imagine it is highly sought by anyone who hears of it after reading Tracks. I have a treasured 20 year old copy I received for Christmas the year it was first published. I'll always remember opening the gift while handing the very same present to my then boyfriend. I no longer have the boyfriend. Happily I have the book.

This book breaks all the boundaries - combining Photography, digital media and narrative to capture the wild spirit in us all. Makes me want to buy and camel and set off!