One-time opposition leader Sussan Ley has broken her silence on her dumping as leader of the Coalition and the road trip through America that proceeded it.

The long-time Farrer MP stepped down as Liberal leader in February after less than a year into the role – and following two messy splits with the The Nationals.

In a lengthy op-ed in the Australian Financial Review Saturday, Ms Ley described the spill against her as the “defining catastrophe” of her life.

Following the spill, Ms Ley said she turned off her phone and “disappeared under the doona”.

“I spent time contemplating the Buddha (’You only lose what you cling to’) and The Clash’s Joe Strummer and his insistence on telling the truth,” she said.

“Recognising the symptoms of burnout does little to blunt their impact. I felt a bit like a windscreen hit by a rock. Everything in place but you just can’t see through it.”

However, she quickly turned her attention to a long talked-about road trip through Middle America, buying a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and then on to North Dakota.

“From there, I boarded a Greyhound at the state’s northern edge and got off another at the bottom of Texas,” she said.

“One backpack, one pair of riot boots, one punk playlist.”

The former Farrer MP described staying in “modest hotels”, and joining Greyhound buses carrying “people in transition and disarray”.

At length, Ms Ley described her travel through South Dakota, including “ubiquitous convenience stores”, before – after travelling further south – “Spanish became the language of the road”. The journey, she likened to the “Wild West”, replete with people “moving cash, narcotics, and undocumented migrants”.

“What surprised me was not disagreement – America has always argued with itself,” she said.

“It was the underlying weariness. Everyone works hard. That part is true. But working hard is no longer enough.”

In one instance, Ms Ley described searching for Donald Trump’s border wall, and spoke to a Border Control officer who refused pictures.

“By then I felt I had seen enough to glimpse what remains when you strip America of its narrative,” she said.

“I felt harmony with the downtrodden while riding the bus network.”

However, Ms Ley said here last observation was that “the United States doesn’t feel like one country. It feels like several, that barely speak to each other.”

“I caught influenza A on my journey so was physically unwell when I got back. But the flattened feeling of six weeks earlier had gone,” she said.

“Coming to terms with the end of my political career, while travelling alongside people carrying much harder truths, restored my perspective on the world and my place within it.”