Tracks: Robyn Davidson Across Australia

Davidson arrived in Alice Springs in 1975 with the idea of crossing the desert with camels. For two years she worked with camel owners, learned how to catch, train and doctor the animals, and how to survive in the desert. In her last year the cameleer Sallay Mahomet helped her and provided the camels she needed. She set out in 1977 with Dookie, a big male, Bub, a smaller male, Zeleika, a wild female, Zeleika's calf Goliath, and her dog, Diggity.

Location precision: The camel farms she worked on aren't located; the pin marks Alice Springs.

The first weeks took her west along the MacDonnell Ranges, past the Glen Helen tourist camp and Redbank Gorge, then south through Areyonga and Tempe Downs towards the great rocks. In Alice Springs she had met the American photographer Rick Smolan, and when National Geographic agreed to sponsor the trip she insisted he be the one to take the pictures; he joined her at intervals along the way. At Glen Helen the Finke River cuts a gorge through the range.

Location precision: Her camps aren't recorded precisely; the pin marks Glen Helen Gorge.

Visitor guidance: Glen Helen Gorge is in Tjoritja / West MacDonnell National Park, 132 km west of Alice Springs on Namatjira Drive.

Her line ran past Mount Olga, the cluster of 36 red domes the Anangu call Kata Tjuta, "many heads", 25 kilometres west of Uluru. The highest dome rises about 546 metres above the plain, higher than Uluru itself. Smolan's photographs of her with the camels near Uluru are among the best known of the trek. Beyond lay the long road west towards the Western Australian border and the Pitjantjatjara communities around Docker River.

Location precision: The pin marks Kata Tjuta as a whole, not any particular site; Davidson's exact track here isn't recorded.

Visitor guidance: Kata Tjuta is in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, which requires a park pass; stay on marked walks such as the Valley of the Winds, and respect Anangu requests not to photograph certain places.

At Docker River (Kaltukatjara), a Pitjantjatjara community founded in 1968 near the border, an elder known as Mr Eddie agreed to walk with her for a few days to Pipalyatjara, to guide her to water and help her pass sacred sites respectfully. He ended up staying with her all the way to Warburton. Davidson, impatient to keep to her schedule, had to learn to slow down: having Eddie with her, she told herself, was going to be the best part of the trip: "so stretch it out, idiot, stretch it out."

Location precision: The pin marks Kaltukatjara community.

At Warburton, a Ngaanyatjarra community, Davidson and Mr Eddie parted. He suggested another older man go with her on the next stretch, because the country ahead would be hard. Decades later his daughter, the artist Jean Burke, painted Davidson as "The Camel Lady" for a Warakurna Artists exhibition, remembering how her father had guided the young white woman through Ngaanyatjarra lands.

Location precision: The pin marks Warburton community.

From Warburton she headed north-west into the Gibson Desert towards Carnegie, a remote cattle station on the old Gunbarrel Highway where the desert meets the pastoral country. This was the loneliest stretch. Somewhere on the way west her dog Diggity, her constant companion, was poisoned by strychnine bait, and Davidson had to shoot her. Beyond Carnegie came a string of sheep and cattle stations: Cunyu, Dalgety Downs and Woodleigh.

Location precision: Her track crossed open desert; the pin marks Carnegie homestead.

About nine months after leaving Alice Springs, Davidson and her camels reached the Indian Ocean at Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay, where Smolan photographed her; one of those pictures is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Hamelin Pool's hypersaline water shelters the world's most diverse living stromatolites, mounds built by microbes in a form that dates back some 3,500 million years.

Location precision: The exact beach isn't recorded; the pin marks the Hamelin Pool reserve.

Visitor guidance: A boardwalk at Hamelin Pool, reached through the old Telegraph Station grounds, leads out over the stromatolites; it is part of the Shark Bay World Heritage Area.