When Sophie Matterson's five camels galloped out of sight in the remote Australian outback taking her water, satellite phone, map and emergency radio beacon with them — the life-or-death reality of her epic journey came into sharp focus.
"It was a terrifying, terrifying moment," she recalled of the incident at the end of her first month on the road.
In the two years since then, Ms Matterson, 32, and her five camels — Delilah, Jude, Clayton, Charlie and Mac — have completed their 5,000-kilometre journey from one side of the country to the other, starting at Shark Bay in Western Australia, and finishing in Byron Bay on the east coast in New South Wales.
Mutual curiosity sparks two-year camel quest
It is not surprising that one of the most common questions Ms Matterson gets asked is, "Why?"
Not only is the coast-to-coast walk physically gruelling, it is also mentally, emotionally and logistically challenging.
But the journey's genesis, Ms Matterson said, could be traced back to the moment she first came across camels at a milking farm.
It is a stretch longer than a camel's neck from finding them cute, to wanting to cross a continent with them.
"The more I learnt about camels, the more I realised how resilient they are and how they are able to deal with the harsh landscape in the outback," Ms Matterson explained.
Ms Matterson had initially hoped to make the trek in nine months, but it became evident, early on, that the time frame was too ambitious and would take too heavy a toll on the health of her camels.
So, the itinerary was blown out to two years, with a six-month recovery break in the middle.
While Ms Matterson said it was a tough decision that "devastated" her initially, it was ultimately "the best decision" she ever made.
'There was nothing I could do except run after them'
The Australian outback has a reputation for being harsh and unforgiving and the consequences of being even momentarily thoughtless or ill-prepared can have life-or-death repercussions.
It's a lesson Ms Matterson learnt early on, when her camels got spooked by a cow in the outback and bolted, leaving her with no water, phone or emergency beacon.
"It happened so quickly I had no idea what had gone on," she said, of the moment the rope was pulled from her hands leaving her flat on the ground.
Ms Matterson described looking up in horror as the camels took off galloping.
"There was nothing I could do except run after them," she said.
"It was all packed away in the bags that were on the camels' backs that were disappearing off into the distance."
Ms Matterson was eventually able to catch up to her small caravan when one of the camels tangled the others in a bush, but not before she had "lost sight of them several times".
"I thought, 'I can't be doing this kind of thing', walking into the really remote stretches of the desert."
A purple dawn at the edge of the east coast
On the final day of her epic voyage, Ms Matterson, her five camels, two friends and her boyfriend Jimmy — a country bloke who fell for the strange woman with all the camels passing through his town — saddled the camels in darkness and walked down to Tyagarah beach.
"It was absolutely magical," she said, of the moment she stepped onto the sand after weeks of rain in Byron Bay.
"There was this beautiful sunrise where that pre-dawn glow came out and turned everything purple," she said.
"We looked across at the lighthouse and the camels were a little unsure of the water and the waves, but I managed to get them down to touch their toes in the ocean.
Ms Matterson and her entourage spent the next week enjoying the lush green paddocks and laid-back lifestyle of Byron Bay.
Today, they will board a specially altered truck bound for the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.
It will mark the end of an incredible chapter in Ms Matterson's life — one she hopes to write about one day.
