Ep. 1191: Walking Across Australia With Five Wild Camels Revisited with Sophie Matterson
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Camel trekking across Australia: Sophie's wild 5-year passion for camels after leaving her film and TV career to milk them, leading to catching and taming five feral camels and walking thousands of kilometers through the Outback from the Flinders Ranges to Coober Pedy and beyond with Jude, Delilah, Charlie, Clayton, and Mac.
After needing a break from her career in film and TV, Sophie took a very fortuitous turn in her life by finding the most random job she could, milking camels. If you didn’t realize camels could be milked, neither did I.
To make a long story short, Sophie fell in love with camels and never went back to her old career. Her ongoing 5-year passion for camels has taken her to places like The Flinders Ranges, Lake Eyre and The Tirari Desert, Uluru, Michigan USA, Texas, and Rajasthan India.
At some point in the pursuit to learn more about these amazing creatures, Sophie got the idea to cross Australia on foot while being accompanied by 5 wild (or “feral”) camels. This would not only entail catching and taming 5 out of upwards of a million wild camels that roam Australia but also walking thousands of kilometers across the vast and void Australian Outback. Keep in mind, Australia is the geographic size of the US with 1/10th of the population. A wild idea indeed!
Today Sophie joins us from just over the halfway point of the journey in the bizarre little town of Coober Pedy.
Jude, Delilah, Charlie, Clayton, and Mac will all continue the journey in March.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast. We talk with adventures from around the globe |
| 0:11.5 | to give you the inspiration you need to get started in the outdoors or keep moving if you're already there. |
| 0:17.8 | Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. This is Caleb. Whenever I'm |
| 0:23.7 | doing these revisited episodes, I try to bring unusual and unique episodes from the ASP backlog. |
| 0:33.9 | And this one definitely fits the bill. In this one, Mason interviews Sophie Madison-interviewed Sophie. |
| 0:40.7 | Sophie, after needing a break from her career in film and TV, |
| 0:46.6 | decided to take on a new adventure in her life |
| 0:49.2 | by deciding to pick up the interesting vocation of camel milking. |
| 0:55.3 | And through that experience, she fell in love with the animals and never returned back to her old career. |
| 1:01.3 | And this episode specifically is about Sophie's crazy idea to cross Australia on foot will be accompanied by five wild camels. Very interesting episode. I hope you |
| 1:14.4 | enjoy it. Here's Mason. All right, folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. This is a, gosh, |
| 1:22.3 | this is, this is an interesting one right here. We, you know, we get a lot of cyclists, a lot of hikers and, you know, |
| 1:29.0 | folks just doing random things, but this is, this is out there for us. It's, I don't even know what |
| 1:34.4 | you call it, Sophie camel trekking or something, but anyway, Sophie, Sophie Maderson, welcome to the show. |
| 1:40.0 | Thank you, Mason. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so is this a thing walking with camels or are you kind of out on your own on this one? |
| 1:48.5 | Well, I mean, I guess it's a thing for some people. It's not super common. |
| 1:53.8 | But, yeah, I'm out on my own. So it's me and five camels and we're walking across Australia at the moment. |
| 2:03.2 | Folks are going to hear my disbelief when I do the intro. |
| 2:09.7 | But I wanted to go all the way back if you don't mind. |
| 2:13.7 | I'm judging here, but it sounds like you're from Australia. |
| 2:17.9 | Yes, I am, yep. |
| 2:19.1 | So where did you grow up? |
... |
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