Camels are wonderful animals. Witty intelligent and sensitive.
some of us just don't want to be famous ... anonymity cannot be bought for any price once you have lost it ...
Real travel would be to see the world for even an instant with another's eyes
It is better to proceed with one's duty in the service of others than wallow in the pain attachments bring
In 10000 BC all human beings were hunter-gatherers; by 1500 AD 1 percent were hunter-gatherers. Less than .001 percent of people are hunter-gatherers today.
I believe that the subconscious always knows what is best. It is our conditional vastly overrated rational mind which screws everything up.
Camels are still trained in Alice Springs for tourist jaunts and for occasional sale to Australia's zoos.
At the age of 25 I gave up my study of Japanese language and culture at university in Brisbane and moved to the town of Alice Springs.
The agricultural revolution transformed the earth and changed the fate of humanity. It produced an entirely new mode of subsistence which remains the foundation of the global economy to this day.
The romantic view would be that nomads are wonderful people better than us; they care about the environment.
Some of the best conversations I've had are sitting around a camp fire.
I believe when you're stuck in one spot for too long it's best to throw a grenade where you stand and jump"¦and pray.
People who wander are nicer to be with. Movement militates against hoarding possessions and against bigotry because you are constantly moving across boundaries and having to negotiate with people.
You really can expand the boundaries of your life and do risky things and prove yourself by doing them.
The genre has moved into this commercial aspect of itself and ignored this extraordinarily rich literature that's filed everywhere else except under travel.
The good Lord in his ultimate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable: hope jokes and dogs but the greatest of these was dogs.
There are worse things than being called 'the camel lady ' I suppose.
After thirty years of being 'the camel lady ' believe me: One becomes inured to the spotlight.
That odd idea that one person can go to a foreign part and in this rather odd voice describe it to the folks back home doesn't make much sense in the post-colonial world.
By taking to the road we free ourselves of baggage both physical and psychological. We walk back to our original condition to our best selves.
I don't want to be bored; I don't want to be with someone I don't respect.
Life's the adventure. You don't have to drop your bundle and go bush. It's about being brave within the context that you're in.
Thank God for being a writer because you do sort of find out what you think by the process of writing.
During these last ten thousand years we have made massive unprecedented changes to the environment creating problems for ourselves that we may not be able to solve.
Camel trips as I suspected all along and as I was about to have confirmed do not being or end: they mere change form.
Never never have a famous partner. It's too complicated.
The truth is I'm not really interested in travel writing as it's generally conceived and even less so in female travel writing.
I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.
Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Find out what you're capable of.
Some instinct - and I think it was a correct one - led me to do something difficult enough to give my life meaning.
You can trick yourself into doing things by doing it one step at a time and never letting yourself see the overall picture.
The idea of finding things out I hope that will stay with me until I drop.
I love the desert and its incomparable sense of space.
The desert is natural; when you are out there you can get in tune with your environment something you lose when you live in the city.
The most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step making the first decision.
These days I am ruled by doubt and that is a difficult place to write from.
My thoughts can sometimes be spurred by what I read but my reading is extremely eclectic.
I do believe that the genre reached its peak before the First World War.
As you get older you do just get tired.
I just don't see myself as a travel writer. I can't. I don't.
As we've lost this idea of pilgrimage we've lost this idea of human beings walking for a very very long time. It does change you.
When there is no one to remind you what society's rules are and there is nothing to keep you linked to that society you had better be prepared for some startling changes.
And there are new kinds of nomads not people who are at home everywhere but who are at home nowhere. I was one of them
I'd always loved writing in the same way that I'd loved painting. I wouldn't have seen it as a career.