Sophie Matterson
Sophie Matterson is the author of The Crossing, a memoir about her adventure solo trekking 4,750km across the width of Australia with her five camels.
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Sophie Matterson is an adventurer and author of the book The Crossing. In 2020 and 2021 Sophie solo trekked 4,750 kilometres across the width of Australia, from Shark Bay, Western Australia to Byron Bay, New South Wales, with her five camels.
Sophie first discovered her passion for camels when she took a break from her career in film and television to work on a camel dairy on the Sunshine Coast. Her unexpected fascination with these enigmatic and intelligent animals fuelled a desire for adventure and she travelled abroad to the USA, and Rajasthan India, where she stayed with the camel trainers and nomads. After returning to Australia, Sophie moved to Uluru where se mustered her own camels from the wild and spent a year training them to carry her equipment for her walk. Her journey of 13 months, took her through some of the most remote and isolated parts of the country, including the Strzelecki Desert, and Australia’s largest desert, the Great Victoria Desert.
In her subsequent memoir, Sophie delves into choosing the path less travelled, and how the adversity of the journey led to a sense of empowerment, as well as the revelation of the beauty of Australia’s wild and arid heart.