Bush Legends: Meet the woman who faced the desert alone

Sophie Matterson reflects on her astonishing journey from west to east, and on the good-natured Aussie hospitality she and her camels met along the way.

Sophie Matterson, who trekked unassisted across Australia with her five camels. Pictures: Sophie Matterson

One of the first sounds you’ll hear at dawn in the desert is the Willy Wagtail, as the vista of sky and sand erupt into a show of light and colour.

It’s a sound that heralds the beginning of the morning chorus, according to Sophie Matterson, who has recently returned from an epic walking trek across the width of Australia, through the Great Victoria Desert, the Strzelecki Desert and Sturt National Park, helped by only her troupe of five camels.

At 33 years old, Sophie has spent many mornings in the past year sitting alone in the desert, a steaming mug of coffee in her hands, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest coffee shop.

“You can see 360 degrees around you, and you get to see the beautiful colours emerging from the sunrise. Then I’ll hear the tinkle of the camel bell … and that’s my cue to start letting them off the bushes they’re tied to.”

Sophie spent 13 months trekking by foot with her camels, from the most western point of Australia at Shark Bay to Cape Byron on the NSW east coast; a solitary journey of almost 5000km.

Stunning: Sophie’s trek was 5000km long.

No physical training took place prior to her setting off.

“The camels and I both got fitter as we went,” Sophie says.

Although physically she and her animals improved as the trip unfurled, mentally she always felt ready, not phased by the prospect of being alone.

“When I walked into the Great Victoria Desert, I was well aware that I was going into a huge space where you’re hundreds of kilometres from the nearest person.”

When she left civilisation behind in April 2020, Sophie was embarking on a journey that would take the greater part of two years.

Walking anywhere from 10km to 30km a day, Sophie slowly made her way east.

Carrying a satellite navigation phone at all times, she would while away the hours speaking to friends and family, or connections she had made in the camel industry.

Other times, she simply walked alone, only her camels and the Australian landscape for company.

“For the most part I was entirely self-sufficient, except in the Great Victoria Desert, where the Oak Valley community did water drops for my camels, as well as the Coober Pedy rangers,” Sophie says.

Her food was mainly dehydrated, with plenty of pasta, rice and lentils for stews and curries.

Some fresh foods such as onions, sweet potatoes, potatoes, apples and oranges made it into her saddlebags, but only if they could keep without refrigeration.

At night, after tying the camels up, Sophie slept in a swag or under a lightweight tarp, ready to start once more when dawn broke.

Sophie and the camels underwent no physical training to prepare.

CAMEL LOVE STORY

Sophie first encountered camels in 2016, when she spent time working on a camel dairy after leaving her career in film and television.

Stumbling on the job through a friend’s aunty, Sophie “absolutely fell in love” with the animals.

Some years later, she was working alongside Chris Hill at Uluru Camel Tours, taking tourists on camel-led Outback tours, and learned how to handle the animals.

A hankering to muster and break in her own camels slowly grew.

“They are just the perfect vehicle to go explore the Outback. Camels are your most ideal animal, they’re the only animal that’s self-sufficient in that sense. They can survive off all the food out there in the desert, and they can go such a long time without water.”

In 2019, she and Chris mustered and caught a mob of about 90 wild camels. From that mob Chris helped her select five to break in.

“One of my biggest goals really was to break in my own wild camels,” Sophie says.

“That was a whole year’s worth of training and getting them from the wild, watching them develop and watching their personalities come out.”

Sophie split the trip into two legs: one trek from the Indian Ocean to Coober Pedy, and a second leg towards Byron Bay, finishing at the turquoise waters of the Pacific Ocean in December last year.

In doing so, she became one of the few women, alongside Robyn Davidson, to complete the journey unassisted and on foot.

While she easily references others – such as Mark Swindell, Andrew Harper and David Mason – who all completed their own version of the trip, when pressed for details Sophie struggles to articulate why she decided to embark on her own expedition.

“I got to have the experience of being isolated and having that solitary time out in the desert which is really what I wanted from the trip,” Sophie says. “It’s an amazing feeling to feel connected to nature in that way.”

COOL CHARACTERS

Sophie speaks to The Weekly Times days after having relocated her five camels –

Jude, Delilah, Charlie, Clayton and Mack – to her new home at Copley, in central South Australia.

Freight difficulties, which are currently plaguing all parts of Australia’s agricultural supply chain, resulted in Sophie buying a truck specifically to transport her camels.

For someone so passionate about her animals, Sophie’s background is not strictly agricultural.

“I grew up in just where it starts to become acreage on the outskirts of Brisbane,” Sophie says.

“One of the most beautiful things about my trip has been actually being able to cross the country and meet all of these amazing rural characters along the way and see how everyone farms, how they farm a little bit differently.”

While each township and station varied from the next, Sophie says Australians are all united by their hospitable nature.

“I’ve had station owners who’d do an almost 100km round trip to deliver me out hay, and it’s no big deal,” she says. “People have helped fix saddles, and weld stuff for me … because in Australia, you are so isolated, you know, and so you have to be able to rely on one another”

The trip mixed desert sands with sparkling seas.

She plans to write a book chronicling her story, and although she hasn’t nutted out all the details yet, she is determined that her journey with camels has not come to an end just yet.

“Both my biggest challenge was probably looking after my animals, and the biggest triumph was also reaching the end of my walk with the same five camels I began with,” Sophie says.

“There’s plenty more deserts, and plenty more spaces out there to explore.”