Tractor Girl: Meet The Mum Taking People's Dreams To The South Pole

Dutch actress and theatre-maker Manon Ossevoort has just achieved her dream to drive to the South Pole on a tractor. The mission took 17 days and covered 2,500km across Antarctica.

After travelling by tractor for years in Europe, the Balkans and Africa Ossevoort set herself a last challenge to voyage to the South Pole to show you can achieve anything you set your mind to. She also collected dreams from hundreds of others along the way, planning to carry them with her to the Pole to help make them happen.

But why?

We cable-called 'Tractor Girl' half way through her mission to find out what she's doing in the snowy wastes.

Why this particular journey?

Because I am a theatre maker and I learned at a theatre school in Amsterdam that for every story you want to tell you need to look for the right form. Sometimes it’s a text or a poem or a dance, but when I created the story of the girl on the tractor, a story about dreams and doing, I very quickly found out that this story would only be fascinating, funny and hopefully worthwhile if I would do it for real rather than act it out in theatre.

I believe that everybody with their own dreams believes it is virtually impossible – they’re very inspired by their dreams but when they think about doing them it seems very impossible. As impossible and far away as wanting to go on a tractor to the South Pole. So I decided to do the seemingly impossible thing of driving a tractor to the South Pole. And hopefully many people will follow the adventures of the girl on her tractor, with all the ups and downs of trying to make that dream come true.

The tractor was the thing that inspired me most. But the dreams were part of that.

Tell us about the dreams you're carrying with you on your tractor

I've collected thousands and thousands of dreams so far and they travel with me privately on this big adventure because I believe it’s very important that people find the courage to admit to themselves what their real dreams are.

But if you go to tractortractor.org you can see lots of public dreams which make for inspiring reading.

Some of them are secret but they're travelling with me in a special place on the tractor. And I hope people manage to make them come true.

Why now?

It took a few years to realise my dream. After travelling all over on the tractor and listening to people and their dreams I wanted to complete the journey but it wasn't until Massey the tractor company agreed to sponsor the trip that it started to become a reality.

Having a young daughter [her 10-month-old is back home in the Netherlands] wasn’t part of my plan. I think life just happened and I’m very grateful for that, and I’m also very grateful that her daddy has taken his paternity leave and he is looking after her right now and taking the time.

We are all three of us looking forward to January when we will all of us meet again and when Mummy has built her snowman on the South Pole and we can start our happy ever after.

What have you leart from the trip?

I think I’ve learnt a lot in the four years that took me from a village in the Netherlands to Europe and the Balkans, including three and half years all by myself in a very old tractor in Africa, I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot of patience and a lot that is difficult to explain. But right now, on this expedition, I am happy to be working together with a team.

That is something new to me and I just see it as one big celebration. Even though right now, it’s minus…I don’t know…48 or something and it’s really cold and it’s a tough trip, I’m smiling because it’s really beautiful and I’m so happy to be here.

What were people's reactions to your trip plans?

The first people I told about this idea were my parents, and they were quiet for a long time. I told them exactly why I wanted to do it and after 20 minutes my father said: “You really want to do this? Then you shouldn’t just talk about it. Then you will do it.”

A lot of my colleagues were really surprised because I was an actor and a theatre maker and all of a sudden I was travelling the world! But slowly they started understanding what story I was trying to tell and I think now, because it’s taken so many years – I was 24 when I started – everyone is just so super-happy that this beautiful story now also gets a beautiful happy ending.

[7 Bizarre Locations You Never Knew Existed]
[We'll Be Able To Go Direct To Seven Destinations]