DANIELLE MURDOCH
Live To Ride
by Shane Downey
The taste for exploration can start anywhere, at any point in your life. From a photograph taken
by friends on a trip overseas, a conversation with a stranger about a foreign land, researching for
a high school geography project, or in Danielle Murdoch’s case, a family trip through Europe in a
bright orange camper van when she was 6 years old is where the travel bug was planted.
For most of us, the thought of travelling alone for a months on two wheels is well beyond our comfort
levels to say the least, let alone through war-torn and third-world countries (for four years). For Danielle, it was the need to shake off the weight of being stuck behind a desk, a desire to explore how
other people lived their lives across the globe that drove her to the decision to leave it all behind.
She wanted to create her own style of living. Danielle Murdoch felt the great urge we ALL desire,
the need to be free.
We recently caught up with Danielle, who had just been told that she will receive the Australian
Geographic Society’s ‘Young Adventurer of the Year Award for 2015’. When asked about receiving
the award, she admitted to getting the ‘warm fuzzies’ every time she thinks about it.
“I would never have ever expected to receive this amazing award. I’ve always admired adventurers, read their stories, let them inspire and guide me throughout my own adventures. I never thought
I would be named Young Adventurer of the Year. I guess I hope that I too will be an inspiration to
someone else” she said. In 2010 Danielle was the very first recipient of the Australian Geographic
Society ‘Nancy Bird Walton Grant for Female Adventurers.”
Growing up, Danielle was always interested in motorcycles but says she never really had the opportunity to learn how to ride one. “Most people are pretty shy about lending their baby to a learner
rider,” she said. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, Danielle had completely forgotten about
her desire to learn to ride, until a trip with friends to Laos in 2006.
“We hired a couple of dirt bikes and travelled around the country on them. In that week we meet
some amazing local people, learnt more about their culture and were involved in several major accidents. It was then I reconnected with motorcycles and decided I needed to learn how to ride”.
An idea started brewing in Danielle. Instead of flying to Europe for her big overseas experience, she
would just ride there.
The fact that there was thousands of kilometres of ocean between home and her desired destination was not a deterrent, in fact it was just a small hurdle compared to some of the challenges she
would face on her journey.
A few months after returning home from Laos, she bought her first motorcycle, a Honda XR 250. “I
still had no idea how to ride it and didn’t have a licence. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I could touch
the ground” she confessed.
Danielle parked the bike outside her bedroom window, so it was the last thing she saw before she
went to sleep and the first thing she saw when she woke up. “It was the encouragement I needed
to get my licence” she added.
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