By Brian Viner
Published: 01:03, 25 April 2014 | Updated: 16:55, 25 April 2014
Tracks (12A)
Verdict: Spiritual awakening by camel
Rating: 
Tracks is a remarkable true story — and Mia Wasikowska is perfectly cast in it as Robyn Davidson, a young Australian woman who, in 1977, embarked on an adventure that was as foolhardy as it was intrepid: leading a small camel train 1,700 miles across Australia.
The plan was to complete the seven-month journey entirely solo, but she needed subsidising, so grudgingly wrote to National Geographic.
The magazine agreed to support her as long as she allowed a photographer, a New Yorker called Rick Smolan (here played by Adam Driver), to join her every few weeks.
Mia Wasikowska is perfectly cast in it as Robyn Davidson, a young Australian woman who, in 1977, embarked on an adventure that was as foolhardy as it was intrepid: leading a small camel train 1,700 miles across Australia
Her story and his images made the cover in March 1978, inspiring her bestselling book Tracks and in due course, this film.
Director John Curran has done a fine job. For obvious visual reasons, film-makers have long been attracted to the Australian Outback, but while landscapes can pose, they can't act.
Curran needed the right person to play Davidson and has struck gold with Wasikowska, wholly convincing as an enigmatic loner still haunted by aspects of her childhood, and apparently happier in the company of creatures with four legs rather than two.
These include her beloved Labrador Diggity and those trusty camels, of which there are so many close-ups that viewers of a certain age might be reminded, as I was, of Johnny Morris getting the hump in Animal Magic.
But it is fairer to compare Tracks with Nic Roeg's classic 1971 film Walkabout, of which I was also reminded.
I'm always loath to use the expression 'voyage of self-discovery', but there is a spiritual dimension to Tracks that makes it more than just a long walk to the sea.
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