2020 Annual Review

Photo credit: Sophie Matterson (2006)

they took off! I normally never run after camels as it will only scare them more but what can you do when everything you need to survive is hanging on their backs? So there I was running through the bush after my five terrified camels. I realised that if I didn’t catch them I was going to be in serious trouble. Stupidly I had nothing on me, everything was in my pack bags. I had no water, no sat phone, no emergency beacon and my phone that I was using to navigate had been flung out of my hand when I fell over. It was a seriously bad situation. As I was running I became completely disoriented and I kept losing sight of them and having to stop and listen for the sound of the water jerry cans bumping about on my back camel. I was puffing and panting and praying for them to stop. It felt like an eternity. I was extremely lucky, the only way I caught up to them was because my lead camel turned around a bush, became entangled and could not keep running.

Let me tell you about this day. I’m leading my string of five camels, feeling like Miss Independent Woman, just like Robyn Davidson from the movie Tracks or Reese Witherspoon from Wild ; the embodiment of female strength and empowerment, singing at the top of my lungs. On this particular day I had decided to take a shortcut and walk across country. I was in the middle of nowhere, roughly 100 kilometres from the nearest town and not following any kind of trail. I was winding my way through the bush using my phone’s GPS to navigate. When, suddenly out of nowhere my lead camel Jude saw a dark shape move in the bushes (it turned out to be only a cow) but for some reason he totally freaked. He pulled the rope from my hand and I fell flat on my face. I watched with my heart in my mouth as my camels, all of whom are attached together by ropes, toppled over one another and equipment started to fall off left, right and centre. Once they got up,

Brisbane Girls Grammar School Annual Review 2020

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