Tracks Quotes

Question 1

The trip was…

Answer 1

…beginning to lose its simplicity

Question 2

Suddenly it seemed as if this trip…

Answer 2

…belonged to everyone else but me.

Question 3

And I felt very…

Answer 3

…small and very alone suddenly in this great emptiness.

Question 4

It [the trip] was changing me…

Answer 4

…in a way that I had not in the least expected.

Question 5

The trip was easy…

Answer 5

It was no more dangerous than crossing the street, or driving to the beach, or eating peanuts.

Question 6

But I found it hard to relax, especially when…

Answer 6

… I had to face being introduced as someone with a label - something that always instigates an identity crisis.

Question 7

From the dizzy heights of joyous success to…

Answer 7

… the gloomy pits of hideous doubt and self-hating in one hour.

Question 8

The last burning bridge…

Answer 8

… back to my old self collapsed. I was on my own.

Question 9

All I remember of that first day alone was a…

Answer 9

…feeling of release; a sustained, buoyant confidence as I strolled along.

Question 10

They were gorgeous photos, no complaints there…

Answer 10

but who was that Vogue model tripping romantically along roads with a bunch of camels behind her

Question 11

They… commented rudely on my appearance…

Answer 11

…as if I were a sideshow for their amusement

Question 12

The self did not seem to be an entity living somewhere inside the skull…

Answer 12

…but a reaction between mind and stimulus

Question 13

When there is no one to remind you…

Answer 13

what society’s rules are… you had better be prepared for some startling changes.

Question 14

Camel lady had that…

Answer 14

nice patronizing belittling ring to it.

Question 15

The most difficult part of any endeavour is…

Answer 15

…taking the first step, making the first decision.

Question 16

It was essential for me to develop beyond…

Answer 16

…the archetypal female creature who from birth had been trained to be sweet, pliable, forgiving, compassionate and door-mattish.

Question 17

I liked myself this way, it was such a…

Answer 17

…relief to be free of disguises and prettiness and attractiveness.

Question 18

And I honestly could not…

Answer 18

…remember, or put into context, etiquette.

Question 19

But worse than all that, I was now a…

Answer 19

… mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for.

Question 20

‘You have done something I would have…

Answer 20

… liked to do, but never had the courage to try.’

Question 21

I found for the first time in my life that I…

Answer 21

…really did enjoy the company of animals better than people.

Question 22

Because of my isolation, Diggity…

Answer 22

…had become a cherished friend rather than simply a pet.

Question 23

It is a frontier town…

Answer 23

…characterized by an aggressive masculine ethic and severe racial tensions.

Question 24

He is biased…

Answer 24

…bigoted, boring and, above all, brutal.

Question 25

They would remain quaint primitives…

Answer 25

…to be gawked at by readers who couldn’t really give a damn what was happening to them.

Question 26

And I wondered as we walked along…

Answer 26

…how the word ‘primitive’ ever got to be associated with people like this.

Question 27

I wanted to do the thing on my own without…

Answer 27

…outside interference or help. An attempt at a pure gesture of independence

Question 28

All around me was magnificence…

Answer 28

Light, power, space and sun

Question 29

I wanted to shout to the vastness…

Answer 29

‘I love you. I love you, sky, bird, wind, precipice, space, sun, desert desert desert.’

Question 30

The country I was travelling through…

Answer 30

…held my undivided attention with its diversity

Question 31

The country seemed alien…

Answer 31

…faded, muted, the silence hostile, overwhelming

Question 32

And as I walked through that country, I was becoming…

Answer 32

…involved with it in a most intense and yet not full conscious way.

Question 33

Before I went to Alice Springs… I had never, in all my life…

Answer 33

… done anything which required manual dexterity, patience, or a sense of functional design

Question 34

And I realised that this trip…

Answer 34

…was not a game. There is nothing so real as having to think about survival.

Question 35

That cowardly self had discovered…

Answer 35

…an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past.

Question 36

I loved them all…

Answer 36

…with an anthropomorphizing devotion. No matter how much I discovered about them, there was always more to learn.

Question 37

where men are men and…

Answer 37

…women are an afterthought

Question 38

It is such a female syndrome…

Answer 38

…so much the weakness of animals who have always been prey

Question 39

I had been sick of carrying around…

Answer 39

…the self-indulgent negativity which was so much the malaise of my generation, my sex and my class.`

Question 40

I walk, I lift up…

Answer 40

…I lift up heart, eyes, to down all the glory of that magnificent heaven

Question 41

It would seem that the combination of elements…

Answer 41

… woman, desert, camels, aloneness, hit some soft spot in this era’s passionless, heartless, aching psyche

Question 42

I was now a feminist symbol…

Answer 42

…I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer