Crossing the Ditch Read online

  From the moment Justin and I took on this project we weren’t afraid to come across as professional in everything we did. If we were going to put an expedition of this size and scope together, it was the least we could do for our stakeholders. However, this perturbed a number of people in the outdoor community who said that we were bastardising adventure by having a businesslike approach.

  The purist way of crossing the Tasman would have been to do it completely naked, with no provisions or water, in a wooden kayak we’d made ourselves. Each element we added to that detracted from the purity of the adventure, but it also decreased the risks.

  Adventure is all about defining a level of risk that you’re willing to accept and going from there. In our Tasman blueprint, we identified strategies to combat the dangers, but there were some risks we assumed that others might not have. One of these was not taking a gun or shark shield to fend off predators. The Tasman Sea is notorious for its great white shark and tiger shark populations. We had to balance the threat of an attack against other factors, such as space on board and power drainage.

  Having a support boat was an idea we toyed with for a while, but we felt this would detract from what we were trying to achieve in the style that we’d defined. There does come a level of certainty where the activity ceases to be an adventure – where there’s no more danger to an expedition than there is to everyday living.

  It’s up to the individual to define the level of risk they’re willing to take and then dealing with the challenges thrown at them. In mountaineering, I’d become quite accepting when it came to absorbing routes with high objective dangers such as avalanches and rock-fall. Climbing without a rope is another one of those grey-area activities where everyone – from experienced mountaineers to people sitting in a pub who’ve never been anywhere near a cliff face – have their two bobs on, but at the end of the day, who are we to define acceptable levels of risks that other humans should take, given that we all have a different risk profile and understanding of the risks?

  One thing I find really frustrating is when people (say…my parents!) tell you you’re going to die etc, with no understanding of how you’re planning to combat the risks that you face. Of course, it’s understandable from their perspective, but that’s why it was so important for us to share that document with Andrew and other seasoned adventurers.

  I learnt this valuable lesson when I was in second year uni boxing in the Australian University Games. I was shit scared of the bout I had coming up, and my coach could sense it. He looked like Micky from Rocky and he’d spent most of his early life in the ring; then, when he’d got too old to fight, he stepped into the corner to train young fellas like myself. He was missing most of his teeth and had a nose that would make the rugby league legend Laurie Daley look pretty. His back was hunched and under the heavily callused knuckles you could tell each one had been broken a multitude of times. He could see the fear in my eyes.

  “What’s wrong, fella?” he asked me one day at the boxing gym at Sydney Uni.

  “Aw, bit scared of the fight I’ve got in a few nights,” I replied sheepishly, staring at the strapping around my knuckles.

  “What is it ya scared of?” he said in his usual gravelly voice.

  “Dunno.”

  “What is it ya scared of?” he growled, ignoring the sound of other boxers sparring in the background.

  I was feeling even more sheepish by now. “I suppose…getting knocked out in my first proper bout in front of a crowd of uni mates.”

  “Then keep your hands up next to your head for the whole night. You won’t win…but you won’t get knocked out either. What else are you scared of?”

  “Not being quick enough to get any jabs in.”

  “Dance on your feet and jab when you get the chance. You’re quicker than the best that I’ve seen – I reckon there’s six fights between you and the Commonwealth Games. You’ve done the training and spent hours and hours on the speed ball and pads.”

  He kept on digging and one by one we addressed all the things I was scared of in that first fight. It was an important lesson – breaking fear down into digestible portions and analysing each one. I went on to knock the bloke out and – as I mentioned earlier – win the AUG middleweight crown.

  5

  Stepping Stones

  “Bloody terrible. Today we began our Coffs Harbour to Sydney paddle at 4am. We got 13km then turned back. My head was weak and I was spewing my guts up for a solid two hours. Seasickness is hideously crippling and makes kayaking extremely difficult. In prior training I’ve been psyched to conquer this challenge but today I was f***ing over it. Larry Gray, Andrew and Pete Bray would have been able to handle the conditions today. We need to toughen up or move aside. My confidence has been shattered – what have we gotten ourselves into?”

  From the inception of the idea of kayaking to NZ, there’d been a lurking fear about how we were going to deal with seasickness. I went through a phase where I thought that if I subjected my body to getting sick, part of its natural response would be to acclimatise to the motion of the sea. Week after week I put myself through this torture and each week I found myself throwing up just as much as the week before. After realising that I was beating my head against a wall, I decided to try some anti-seasickness drugs. I started with the herbal stuff – wrist bands and ginger tablets – which I quickly learnt had next to no positive effect in keeping my breakfast down. I then moved on to consumer drugs that were readily available at the chemist. Kwells began to work a treat:

  Awesome, awesome, awesome. Went sea kayaking today – didn’t get seasick at all!

  As soon as we found this solution we started doing overnight paddles up and down the coast. On one occasion, we set out to paddle from Wollongong to Sydney into a 45-kilometre-per-hour nor’easterly wind, which made progress painfully slow.

  What a shit of a day. The inherent problem with sea kayaking is that the probability of having a stunning day seems to be minimal – eight out of 10 paddles you’re constantly battling with shit. Today we were against the wind and the current and there were billions of bluebottles everywhere. We both got done so many times we lost count. One of the f***ers landed on my face and wrapped its “thin dick” tentacles around my neck.

  To add more insult to the whole situation, you can’t get any rhythm or momentum as crashing through waves slows you down as effectively as trying to drive a Toyota Corolla through a brick fence. The drugs are working great though. Still, I’d much prefer to be spending my weekends up at the mountains.

  That weekend, the sea had been littered with thousands of bluebottles. I was stung by 19 of them on the Saturday – the first day – and on the Sunday I lost count. By the time we’d paddled into Bondi late that afternoon, the stings on top of stings made us look like lepers – to the horror of everyone we saw on the beach.

  Over the following days, our chests and backs erupted in angry welts and blisters. The adventure taught us some valuable lessons, like: the palms of your hands and the balls of your feet can’t get stung; and pissing on a sting helps ease the pain.

  Throughout my diaries at the time I constantly made comments about wanting to be up in the mountains, but by the end of the Tasman crossing, our bodies had come to accept the discomfort at sea and we enjoyed paddling more than ever before. Being cold and wet became life and our bodies adjusted to that.

  Having said that, mountaineering had a few advantages over kayaking endlessly across an ocean. In some ways, sea kayaking is monotonous in that you’re principally concerned with reaching the “summit”. The actual activity lacks the wow factor. It contrasts with climbing, in which style (whether or not you choose to free-climb or aid-climb (using or not using equipment to help with the ascent)), as well as your actual progress – appreciating the various stages of the climb – is what you enjoy, and getting to the top and back to the hut is only a small part of the experience.

  In the midst of these weekly ocean excursions, Justin and I were feverish
ly working on our sponsorship plans. First stop was my former employer. We’d spent over a month putting together a swish proposal and we truly believed we had something to offer the company I’d left four months before. We assumed that we’d be able to attract them as our major sponsor, but unfortunately when we presented to the Chief Marketing Officer, we were shut down.

  It was incredibly frustrating. One of the core messages the company liked to communicate in their marketing was that they were different – they were an innovator. That certainly wasn’t where the CMO was coming from. He harped on about how partners at the firm wanted risk-free clients, risk-free marketing and the firm wanted risk-free fundraising. In hindsight, I guess kayaking across the Tasman was a little different from the average proposals that flooded through the door each day.

  Maybe we didn’t sell the message well enough. Anyway, it hurt that we’d spent so much time tailoring a presentation to them when we could have been speaking to companies who actually had a sense of adventure.

  The sponsorship road was proving to be much more difficult than we’d originally anticipated. The following week, we met with Air New Zealand and made a mind-blowingly stupid mistake. They were impressed with the proposal, our professionalism etc, but then asked, “We’re just not sure how sponsoring you guys is going to result in getting more bums on seats.”

  Justin and I looked at one another blankly and dopily replied, “Neither do we.” That was that.

  With all these rejections we were copping, each blow hurt, but we were learning valuable lessons about what these companies wanted. Sponsorship was a two-way relationship which had to be mutually beneficial – we weren’t a charity. We honestly felt we had something to offer, but obviously weren’t conveying our message clearly enough. We kept telling ourselves that you learn more from rejection and failure than from anything else.

  Now began the long road of approaching over 130 different companies from right around the globe. Flicking through a BRW magazine I came across an interview with David Spence, the CEO of a company called Unwired. They were in the business of providing wireless internet to consumers in Sydney, and the article delved into David’s love of the ocean and his experience in the tragic 1979 Fastnet Race off the English coast that claimed the lives of 15 sailors.

  David’s approach to management and strategy was inspiring. He was aggressive and always had an eye open for innovative opportunities. We knew we had to get a proposal in front of him, but it proved to be difficult. Because of the company’s relatively flat management structure, we finally got a proposal to the brand manager, Olivia Donohoe, who elevated it to the CMO. She then discussed the proposal with David. Her take was that our proposal was the best that she had ever seen. With their marketing team happy with the proposal, and with the CEO’s love of the ocean, we felt we had a decent chance of securing our major sponsor for the expedition.

  Gear sponsorship was relatively easy, but getting companies to part with cash was much more of a challenge. As a result, we tried to keep our costs to a minimum by sourcing all our products from the suppliers. This was time-intensive but delivered results. We sourced everything from all the kayak materials (fibreglass, resin, epoxy, foam, Kevlar and carbon fibre) to each item of clothing and food. On the low end, this included phoning 10 almond farmers, looking for someone willing to part with 20 kilograms of nuts! We finally found someone in South Australia who shipped us two 10 kilogram boxes.

  As the design neared completion, the need to find some funding to build the kayak was becoming more urgent. We had to raise approximately $80,000 for the labour alone with zero dollars in the bank. The issue was that potential investors wanted to see something tangible before they parted ways with their cash, but we needed the funding to build the kayak in order to attract investors. It was a Catch 22 that all small businesses are faced with. We knew that investors would get excited by the unique shape of the kayak, but we needed something to show first.

  As we dealt with these sponsorship issues, we were also planning to kayak across Bass Strait. It was a huge milestone to help prepare us for the Tasman. We left Sydney on 21 March to drive down to Port Welshpool, a coastal village in Gippsland in Victoria, where we were to start our 340-kilometre crossing of the strait via the eastern route. (Parts of Wilsons Promontory, the southern tip of the Victorian coast, weren’t accessible by car, so Port Welshpool was an ideal starting point.)

  There are 28 islands between the Australian mainland and Tasmania and our course linked three of these: Hogan Island, Deal Island – in the Kent Group – and Flinders Island. Pre-trip jitters on our drive to Melbourne were compounded by a look of despair on Jonesy’s face: he was losing the battle to a nasty fever.

  I chuckled, “Perfect partner to go paddling across Bass Strait!”

  Four days later, Justin’s fever subsided and we began our journey in a yellow two-man Pittarak kayak – dubbed the Queen Mary – with an uneventful five-hour paddle to Refuge Cove on the mainland. The weather had been great and we’d enjoyed very welcome tidal assistance. Camping in the cove that evening, we knew from the forecasts that our first island crossing wouldn’t be blessed with the same good conditions.

  In the morning, the pristine, isolated landscape – with low cloud hiding the receding peaks – made us feel like we’d entered a Jurassic Park time capsule. There was little chit-chat; full concentration was required for the choppy conditions. No sight of land for almost two hours heightened our sense of isolation. We paddled round the southern tip of Hogan Island to find ourselves hidden from a southerly wind that had caked salt down the left-hand side of our thermals. After we reached the shore and secured the Queen Mary, we settled in for the evening. Although there aren’t any trees on the island, the birdlife, penguins and the general elation of being on our own out there was magical.

  Next morning, our tranquil shelter became a cauldron of froth, thanks to a change in the wind direction. The exit looked dangerous, and the thought of paddling into a 50-kilometre-per-hour wind didn’t appeal. Instead, we spent the day exploring, accompanied by a 10-centimetre plastic penguin mascot we’d been given as part of a telco promotion. After 30 hours out of the kayak, it was amazing how rapidly our bodies had adapted to the stresses of expedition paddling. Both of us felt much stronger after our rest day (although that may have had something to do with eating all the chocolate mousse we had on board!).

  The paddle from Hogan to Deal was straightforward, until we reached the island and had to battle both into headwinds and against currents – something we’d get very familiar with out on the Tasman – to make landfall. Once ashore, we were immediately struck by the change in landscape from the barren Hogan Island. As a stark contrast, Deal Island is covered in a thick blanket of shrubs and trees.

  On our fifth morning we woke feeling a bit anxious. This would be our biggest crossing – 65 kilometres. With a cold front expected the following day, bringing gale-force weather, we were hoping we’d be able to seek refuge at Killiecrankie, a small fishing village with a population of 15 on the northern tip of Flinders Island. A 6am weather forecast we got from our satellite phone made us feel a bit more confident that we had a window to get to safety.

  We started paddling on a compass bearing of 124 degrees with no sight of land. As each hour passed, our umbilical cord with Deal Island was slowly severed, leaving us more and more exposed. We were alone. It was a humbling experience sitting in a primitive kayak, surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of ocean, with only a smattering of islands dotted around us. Our minds wandered to eight months ahead: we’d be out on the Tasman then, halfway to NZ! This was why we were crossing Bass Strait: for the physical, mental and psychological preparation.

  It was right about now that we were most grateful for our trusty GPS. It didn’t allow current drift or tidal influences to manipulate its readings, giving us constant measurement of our actual speed. Without it, our progress could have been cunningly deceptive – the GPS readings kept our compass honest.

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nbsp; Hours passed, and slowly Flinders Island crept over the horizon like Atlantis rising from the sea. A wave of relief washed through us as we reached the shore. We’d paddled about 220 of the total 350 kilometres and now had the biggest stretch of ocean behind us; we could enjoy the company of people – not penguins – and we had the comfort of knowing there was land nearby for the rest of the journey.

  “Gale warning for all Bass Strait!” was the Bureau of Meteorology forecast for the following day. Although we’d received an adverse weather report, the weather looked favourable at the time, so we jumped in the boat and set our sights on Trouser Point, on the southern tip of Flinders Island. As we paddled out from Killiecrankie, an old salt clearing his lobster nets casually warned: “Wouldn’t go out there today, boys.”

  Enough said; back to land we went. Better not to disrespect 50-odd years of local knowledge and an unfavourable weather forecast. Nestled in a tiny hut behind sand dunes, we hid from the intensifying storm. While it still raged, we hitched a ride with a local fisherman to Whitemark – the capital of Flinders with a population of 50 – to tuck into a pub meal and down a couple of beers. Later, we discovered our “free ride” had sentenced us to five hours’ labour moving the local souvenir shop around the block for the owner!

  Shifting display cabinets motivated us to get back on the water pronto! The cold front passed the following morning, and with an okay from our old mate, we were off down the western coast of Flinders Island to set up for the Franklin Sound crossing.

  As we progressed further south, the chill penetrated our bones. Throughout the day, there was a constant coolness in the air requiring us to wear Gore-Tex jackets even while paddling. Our fingers felt like wooden roots curled around our paddle shafts. At Trouser Point we lit a fire to provide warmth and to cook; our supply of fuel was diminishing rapidly. The nagging cold didn’t allow our bodies to recover efficiently while we slept and we went through a huge amount of wood trying to stay warm during the night.