Some of us eat ice-cream after a breakup. Sophie walked 4750km across the outback.

Sophie Matterson likes to say that she "fell into camels". Not literally, of course. (Actually, probably literally on the odd occasion. But nevermind that...)

What Sophie means is that, in the space of just a few years, she went from having only seen camels on overseas holidays to leading five, newly domesticated dromedaries on a 4750 km trek from one side of Australia to the other.

Speaking to Mamamia's No Filter podcast, the adventurer said it all started in 2016, when she took a job at a camel dairy run by a friend’s aunt on the Queensland Sunshine Coast. Sophie had grown up around horses and considered herself "an animal person", but she wasn't prepared for the experience of meeting camels.

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"They all brought their heads right into me. And they gave me this long, long smell with their nostrils right touching my face. And it was the most amazing experience," Sophie said. "I'd almost describe it as a bit of a reading of my soul. It was like they were really getting to know who I was, what I was about, how I was feeling, what my intentions were. It stuck with me, that moment."

Sophie became so enraptured by these animals that she embarked on a mission to learn as much about them as she could. That mission took her to The Flinders Ranges, the Tirari Desert, and to Uluru, as well as abroad to the US states of Michigan and Texas, and Rajasthan in India.

"I was at this point in my life where I'd never really found something that I was totally passionate about and totally focused on. And the camels had, all of a sudden, provided this huge focus and drive and passion," she said.

Amid it all, she started dreaming of an epic camel trek. One in the style of Tracks author Robyn Davidson, who famously ventured across the Western Australian deserts with her dog and four camels in 1977.

Sophie imagined taking the journey with her long-term partner, Sam — an Army man who she described at the time as the love of her life. But between Sam's tours in Iraq and Sophie's quests to remote corners of the world, their relationship reached a breaking point. It was Sophie who delivered the final blow. In an act of "cruel self-sabotage", she had a fling with a French chef whom she worked with on outback camel treks. As she writes in her book, The Crossing, which documents her incredible journey, "I didn't know how to fix my relationship, so I blew it up from the inside out."

Speaking to Mamamia, Sophie said her split from Sam actually spurred her on towards her dream trek: "I sort of thought, 'God... there's this one person that I loved so, so much, and I've gone and stuffed that up. Now I have to follow through, otherwise it's going to have been for nothing.'"

In 2019, single and having just turned 30, Sophie bought five wild camels from a station near Uluru. Over the course of a year, she named them (Jude, Delilah, Charlie, Clayton, Mac), tamed them, trained them, and planned the journey they would take together from Shark Bay in Western Australia to Byron Bay, NSW. Almost 5000 km. Alone.

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Laden with bare essentials (food, water, camping gear, and two rifles among them), the six of them set off in April 2020. Their journey saw them traverse enormous drought-sapped cattle stations, harsh desert, salt lakes, sacred Aboriginal sites (which she was granted special permission to travel through), dunes, and fields of fleeting wildflowers.

"The beauty of the Outback is in the detail. And that's what you really get to see when you walk the country at that slow pace of three kilometres an hour," Sophie said.

There were characters, too. People who broke up long stretches in which Sophie had only her camels for company. Like a group of young men on a hunting trip who shared beers and steak with her in the middle of the outback. Or the station caretaker who, for four nights in a row, drove to share dinner with her before she headed into a vast expanse of lonely desert.

Much of the time, though, Sophie only saw faint signs of civilization. The carcasses of culled wild camels. Tyre tracks from rangers' utes. Clusters of flickering lights from homesteads, or mining camps, visible from hundreds of kilometres away. Until...

"I have this memory of going into the Great Victoria Desert and it was like all light had been extinguished. All of a sudden, I was that remote that there was nothing else out there. The blackness, it was almost like thick," she said.

"It's quite a cool feeling because you realise that not many other people have been through that, not many other people have been to these special spots that are so remote. You start to get comfortable with that."

There were challenges, of course. Thick swarms of flies. Her camels bolting. Stretches where there was no feed on the ground for them. Wild male camels coming so close she had to shoot them to protect her herd. Hot summer weather forcing her to pause the trek for several months.

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But she also fell in love again along the way. Jimmy worked at a bakery in a tiny town in the Flinders Rangers. In him she found someone who celebrated her unique passion, and who proved to be critical support. He drove hundreds of kilometres to deliver water and hay, stayed with her for parts of the journey, and cleared traffic as Sophie and the camels walked their final stretch into Byron Bay in December 2021. 

Just like the relationship, the finish line caught Sophie by surprise.

"When I saw the ocean for the first time, it kind of shocked me," she said. "I got so used to compartmentalising, taking every day at a time and just focusing on where I was at, that it was like, 'Oh sh**, we're actually there.'"

In The Crossing, Sophie writes that when she stared at the Pacific Ocean that summer morning, filled with joy, as well as awe and gratitude for her beloved camels, she felt like the boundless horizon was an invitation, beckoning her toward the "infinite possibilities for new adventures that lay beyond".

Tragically, her lead camel, Jude, died of a mystery ailment (possibly poison from a snake bite or tropical plant) within weeks of finishing the journey, leaving Sophie to grapple with a 'crushing, crushing' grief. But like that horizon, she feels his presence urging her on.

"There are always more adventures to be had. I'm sure I can come up with some crazy thing, like walking yaks from one side of the Himalayas to the other," she laughed.

In all seriousness, she's interested in heading back into the red centre of our country with Delilah, Charlie, Clayton and Mac — exploring all 10 deserts, perhaps. 

"Having been under a roof, in a bed, for a couple of years now, I'm definitely starting to crave being back out there in the swag under the stars, and walking with my big animals."

For more of Sophie's story, including what she found the most challenging part of her trek, listen to No Filter below or subscribe via your favourite podcast app.

Feature Image: Instagram @sophiematterson.