Crossing the Ditch Read online

  Coming from an all-boys school, picking up or even mingling with girls was a bit foreign to us. Those skills had been gifted to the guys in the First XV – they’d been my peers a few years earlier, but my last injury had segregated me from them. At the time, neither of us had a girlfriend, but we had great romantic ideals about how it was meant to happen…

  A couple of days after I finished my last HSC exam, I met a gorgeous girl, Jen. It was Melbourne Cup day and I saw her standing on the other side of the room up at the local pub. I had to meet her. Smashing a couple of pints, I built enough confidence to go and introduce myself – this in itself was the scariest thing I’d ever done at the time. The conversation was uncomfortable, forced, and by the end of it, she’d blown my socks off.

  Our school formal was approaching and I had no-one to ask. Justin had been set up to go with a girl he didn’t know and it looked like I was going down a similar path. My thoughts turned to Jen and I convinced myself I had to invite her. Getting her phone number from one of the guys in the First XV, I nervously scribbled some possible small talk on the back of a beer coaster and gave her a call. Given our initial meeting I was surprised she accepted, but we found ourselves heading off to the formal.

  The night was going brilliantly until I saw her dirty dancing with one of the guys I despised most in our year. His hands slithered like snakes over her stunning red dress. I couldn’t take it. Running outside, I saw some boarders skolling bottles of red wine and decided to partake myself. A bottle and a half later, I was escorting Jen to the bus for the after-party, and while we were getting on board, my stomach was churning and sweat was starting to prickle on my forehead. This was a feeling I’d become quite familiar with over the coming years – not alcohol-induced but because of my battle with seasickness. It was the early stages of spewing.

  Within a few minutes I was choking back the vomit rising into my mouth: it was about to erupt. With no further warning, I started spewing in my seat, to everyone’s disgust. I’ll never forget looking into Jen’s eyes and seeing her disappointment, horror and, worst of all, embarrassment. Crashing off the bus, I passed out in some bushes, leaving Justin to find me hours later. That was that.

  I never ended up dating Jen, but somehow, after starting a Commerce degree together at the University of Sydney, we became great friends. And it was at uni that I began to have an insatiable appetite for questioning the framework of society. In my spare time, I immersed myself in authors like Tolstoy, Thoreau and Ayn Rand, and also began enjoying adventure literature. With my learning difficulties as a kid, I don’t think I ever read a book for pleasure when I was at school, but these stories of adventure fascinated me. The contrast between sitting in a Microeconomics lecture and dreaming of Scott or Shackleton fighting the elements in Antarctica woke my spirit. These books would help spark something in me that would completely change my life…not that I knew it yet.

  2

  “The Murray River, You Doofus!”

  Enough was enough and Jonesy and I had decided we needed to get into shape. As the fat melted off with intense exercise and we slowly got into the outdoors, we began to realise that although we were confused and insecure in our busy – but sheltered – city life, out there bushwalking we were able to discover our core values and principles, as we questioned more and more the world we’d grown up in.

  In second year I started boxing regularly. From the moment I first stepped in the ring I loved the sport. Interestingly, the reason I started boxing was because it was one of two sports I just couldn’t relate to (the other being soccer – disgraceful for a Greek Australian, I know!). I mean – why would two blokes want to get in the ring and beat the hell out of one another? I was to learn quickly that it was a delicate and skilful art that demanded complete respect.

  Boxing three times a week, I soon realised it was a sport that came quite naturally to me, and in my second year I represented Sydney Uni at the Australian University Games (AUG). Unfortunately, my parents hated boxing and made a one-way deal that if I continued with it, I had to move out of home. Looking at the measly wage I was earning part time as a kitchen hand, there was no way I would’ve been able to live off that. As a result, I retired from boxing after winning the AUG middleweight title.

  The question “what do I want out of life?” started to become a central thought and conversation topic for Justin and myself, especially during those long walks when it seemed natural to contemplate the big issues. We didn’t want to have to conform with the world we’d been brought up in, but we didn’t have any answers either. We did know, though, that we wanted to spend more and more time bushwalking in the Blue Mountains, which – we identified pretty early on – brought us real happiness.

  On one of these walks, a 144-kilometre trek from Katoomba to Mittagong with Justin and two friends named Ben, I turned to the guys as we were clawing our way up the steep Balloon Pass, lathered in sweat, and asked, “What’s Australia’s longest river?”

  “The Murray River, you doofus!” one of the Bens replied. He’d never been one for unnecessary politeness.

  “How would you guys like to paddle the length of the Murray this summer?” To this day, I have no idea where the thought came from.

  “Don’t be stupid, mate, you’ve never been kayaking before.”

  “Can’t be that hard,” I said. “It looks like bushwalking on water.”

  “Next you’re going to say you’re Jesus.”

  When I got home from the trek I opened up the atlas and examined the Murray’s meandering path from the Snowy Mountains down to Goolwa at the mouth of the Southern Ocean in South Australia. After a handful of phone calls (to the Murray River registrar, a raft-guiding company on the upper Murray, and a few other paddlers), Justin and I discovered that no-one had ever kayaked the entire length of the river. Our souls were now wide awake – I’m not sure why, but this was something we had to do – and immersing ourselves in the project, we quickly got our hands on some big heavy plastic kayaks that would do the job.

  True adventure isn’t something that can be defined by any one person, but for us it was that burning feeling inside when we were in the outdoors challenging ourselves. Our first couple of paddles around Bobbin Head – where Sam and I had put our little tinnie in the water almost eight years earlier – we felt like explorers. Initially, we said we’d paddle to the other side of the river but we found ourselves travelling a whopping 3 kilometres downstream. We immediately loved the motion of kayaking – it felt so natural.

  The Murray River trip, which we dubbed “Kayak for Kids”, was the first proper expedition we’d ever organised. Justin, another friend from school, Andrew, and I spent months planning it, raising $10,000 sponsorship and funds for the Starlight Foundation.

  On 8 November 2001, we started the 2560-kilometre journey at Thredbo, which we expected to take seven weeks. Little did we know we were heading into one of the hottest summers in years. We bashed through the bush for a couple of days on foot, trying to find the source of the Murray River – Cowombat Flat. When we made it to the source, which began as a trickle no wider than a drainpipe, we started to follow it along its edges.

  We found ourselves surrounded by bluffs in scrub that was near impenetrable – at this pace we’d never make it to our rendezvous 40 kilometres downstream, where we were due to pick up our kayaks from my dad and a couple of his 4WDing mates. The only hope we had was to surf on our packs down the ever-growing rapids, which were becoming more intimidating…enough to throw us around like rag dolls and hold us under for up to 20 seconds at the end of a run. We spent the next three days surfing these rapids, which were Grade 3 at times – really scary.

  The water was snowmelt, so it was bloody freezing, and as we hadn’t prepared for this, everything in our packs got drenched, including our camera, GPS, sleeping bags, food, and, unfortunately, matches. Everything. Each night was spent shivering away in wet thermals hugging each other in the foetal position. It was my first “spooning” experience, a
nd sadly it was far from romantic. Kilometres from civilisation, with the violent white water of the Murray on one side and impregnable scrub on the other, we were terrified.

  Eventually, overwhelmingly relieved, we made it to the rendezvous, a week after we’d left Thredbo. We got our kayaks and continued downriver on our Huckleberry Finn adventure. Although we were young, naïve and malleable, and the Murray was proving to be dangerous, we were still loving it.

  We’d often stop at towns for supplies and met numerous interesting characters along the way. As we paddled past one particular houseboat, a shirtless bloke started waving his hands about and yelling crazily, “Oi, boys, come over and say hello to Russel!”

  Andrew was nowhere to be seen, and Justin and I were both pretty scared. What did this guy want? We gingerly paddled towards him not knowing what to expect, but we quickly found out that the local AM radio station had briefly mentioned our trip, and Russel, whose eyes were hidden by his scuba-mask-Cancer-Council sunglasses, wanted to offer us a bed for the night, a porterhouse steak and a beer. Justin would love to have stopped, but Andrew was keen on pushing another 25 kilometres downriver that evening. Russel handed us a 20-dollar donation and we parted ways.

  A little further down the river a bloke named Spike, who let us crash at his caravan park for free, and Bernie and his wife, a couple of the residents, sat with us and gave us a cold VB. Bernie was on his last legs – pancreatic cancer (if he hadn’t told us we wouldn’t have known it) – and he only had another couple of months to live.

  As the summer’s heat baked us, we began having to deal with the most difficult issue we had on the expedition – each other. The seed had been planted right at the start and we didn’t deal with it sufficiently at the time: our different objectives and agendas for wanting to do the river. Andrew was keen on getting down the Murray as quickly as possible and pushing the mind and body to the limit. Justin, on the other hand, wanted to take his time, enjoy the scenery and the river people and do some fundraising along the way.

  This caused enormous tension and bad blood between them. I was left as the middle man with the aim of getting us all down the river safely – either Andrew’s or Justin’s approach didn’t bother me too much. For two reasons, I often found myself siding with Jonesy. Firstly, because he was my best mate, and secondly, because he was the weakest paddler in the group. From the bushwalking we’d done, we learnt to always travel at the speed of the slowest person. On the river, that was Jonesy. He was a slogger – no technique, but he’d push on regardless.

  My biggest source of frustration with Justin (which would also come out in the prep for the Tasman) was the lack of training and preparation he’d done. Both Andrew and I had trained hard and worked hard on the logistics, while Jonesy had hardly ever got out on the water. When we did our first decent team paddle, a 40-kilometre round trip from Bobbin Head to Pittwater, he’d lagged significantly, thanks to his lack of training and the big night he’d had the previous evening. His social life took priority over the kayaking.

  This lack of training almost ended his Kayak for Kids paddle – and possibly his life – on day 5, when he didn’t have enough control over his kayak to avoid a fallen willow tree on the upper reaches of the fast-flowing Murray. Andrew and I steered around it fairly easily, but Justin ploughed straight into it, the flow of the river pinning his kayak about a metre under water. Luckily, he was able to pull himself out before he drowned. It was a frightening experience for us all.

  As we continued down the river, the tension between Andrew and Justin crescendoed, to the stage where neither was talking to the other and Justin considered pulling out. It was a vital lesson. When you’re on an expedition, everyone needs to be committed to the same objective. The dynamic within a group can have a crucial impact on morale, as well as your ability to push boundaries. With a close-knit team of people you trust, an epic trip is infinitely more manageable.

  Paddling in the heat was almost as debilitating as the tension that filled the air. It singed our nostrils and each breath was a brief visit to hell. Then there was the wretched smell – the terrible aroma of dying livestock – that wafted through the heatwaves towards us. Farms were crippled by the raging heat that summer.

  All we could do, though, was keep on paddling. By day 32 we were still battling down the Murray, still committed to our bid to become the first people to kayak from source to mouth, with over 1200 kilometres to go.

  “Hey, Jonesy,” I called out to him that afternoon, “can you imagine paddling a similar distance on the ocean…all the way across to New Zealand…?”

  Justin’s look said it all: an empty gaze, one of compassion and sympathy. The heat had got to me, or so he thought. His eyes staunchly peered out from the recesses of his legionnaire’s hat. It was worn and ragged with “breathing” holes on the left-hand side and a rim that drooped sadly, revealing a tough life. It proudly fought the harsh rays and provided some respite from the ever-intensifying heat.

  After his initial reflection came a muffled reply. “You’re crazy.”

  Before I had time to elaborate, his cadence picked up and all I could see was the uniform flap of his ragged hat; apart from occasional glimpses of a face devoid of expression. I began to question my sanity – had I drunk my three litres of water that day? Despite Jonesy’s scepticism, though, I remember, before we returned to Sydney at the end of that journey, a vivid gleam in his eyes. I could tell that a seed had been planted, and it was that subtle glimmer that I’d try to arouse once we were back home.

  Seven weeks after finding the source, we arrived together at the mouth of the Murray to the cheers of all our families. Thankfully, Justin and Andrew had put their differences behind them, and on day 49 we paddled to where the river met the ocean. A feeling of pride and contentment welled up inside – something not even winning the under-16 club rugby grand final or managing to do well in my last year at school could match. We weren’t surprised to discover that there was no media fanfare to greet our arrival. Just one photographer – from the Adelaide Advertiser – was there to record the moment.

  Paddling on rivers, bushwalking in the mountains and now organising Kayak for Kids had all played a role for Justin and me in quelling the self-doubt about our place in the world and what we wanted to do with our lives. It also gave me the opportunity to take time out from my family. As I’ve mentioned, both Mum and Dad are quite traditional folk and they wanted nothing more from their son than to be a partner of a large accounting firm.

  We were a middle-class family with two working parents struggling to send their three kids to private schools. Those years around leaving school, Mum and Dad used to argue quite a bit, the fights fuelled by the financial burden of them building a new house. I found myself siding with Mum all the time – in those days, my father seemed quite short-tempered and distant (like most teenagers, I had no trouble seeing the worst in my parents) – which in itself bred tension between me and Dad.

  At the same time, I found it difficult to develop any sort of relationship of substance with my mother, because of her reaction to the financial pressures. Most days she was the most caring, loving mother anyone could ask for, but occasionally the situation would get the better of her and she’d snap at me for no apparent reason (that I could see).

  Like a lot of young people, I was feeling unloved and unsure of what to do with myself. Adventure provided the stability that I needed. If I hadn’t discovered nature at that critical time in my life, I’d hate to see the path it would have led to – unfortunately, alcohol and drug abuse are more common ways for people to curb those feelings bubbling inside.

  I started to keep my distance from my family, as well as many of my school friends who’d started partying hard. I was finding solace in nature and comfort in my friendships with outdoorsmen (I’m not being sexist – it was just that they all seemed to be male!), as many of them had similar inner demons nibbling away at them and we’d all instantly forget about these rodents when out playing i
n the wild.

  During these treks, I began thinking about how ironic it was that sometimes those closest to you provided the most resistance to your growth. I remember writing in my diary that it felt like my family never encouraged me whenever I wanted to do something big or change direction in some way. I think people like to keep things as they are – in a constant state – and as soon as we veer off the trodden path, alarm bells start to ring. That’s what I felt was going on with my parents anyhow.

  Exposure to the wilderness was cleansing, but I became more interested in pushing my boundaries. The bushwalks started to get longer and longer, and Justin and I began taking less gear – often not sleeping – and accessing the remotest areas of the mountains. These tiger walks, as well as 100-kilometre paddles, pushed our minds and bodies beyond what we’d understood was possible.

  A classic example was the three peaks walk we did in the Blue Mountains, just out of Sydney. It was an 80-kilometre circuit, mainly off trails and with no sleep, with elevation gain – the cumulative ascents and descents over the course of a trek – of approximately 8000 metres.

  Justin’s ability to push his body past reason on our third attempt at the three peaks challenge was amazing. We’d been going for 30 hours straight – understandably we were pretty knackered. We were onto the third peak, and making our way up the steep flank of Mount Guongang in the wee hours of the morning. As the spur sharply rolled away, I made my way onto the summit, then sat on the ground waiting for Jonesy, who I thought was right behind me. After 10 minutes I was starting to get pretty concerned and I thought about making my way back down to see what had happened to him. At that moment his head popped up and he slowly made his way towards the summit.

  “What happened?” I asked.