All the Way Round
Authors: Stuart Trueman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs
About
All the Way Round
In 2010, Stuart Trueman set out on a 16-month circumnavigation of Australia by kayak – an extraordinary feat that had been achieved only twice before.
Stuart’s epic paddle of 17,000 kilometres saw him face many challenges – the non-stop crossing of mighty 200-kilometre cliff formations, huge seas, dangerous surf, sleeping whales, inquisitive sharks, large crocodiles and the sheer, relentless physical grind of paddling round Australia’s massive coastline. What’s more, it was an adventure on a shoestring, with no support team – just a powerful belief in the philosophy of Do-It-Yourself, and the kindness and help of the many people he met along the way.
From heatstroke in the tropical north to hypothermia in the Southern Ocean, Stuart experienced all the hardships and wonders of Australia’s amazingly diverse geography. Filled with wry humour and resilience,
All the Way Round
is a gripping account of a voyage that vividly brings to life the coasts of our incredible continent.
Contents
To my wife, Sharon,
and my daughters, Brittany and Ella
Map 1: Stuart’s circumnavigation of Australia
Preface
Broome, 11 April 2010
I
was halfway into my 40-kilometre crossing of Roebuck Bay from Broome to Cape Villaret. I couldn’t see where I’d left from and couldn’t see my destination. The coastline was low and barely visible from my kayak. It was just an image of land, shimmering and flickering in the heat; it was the only thing moving.
It was hot, very hot: 50°C in the sun and there was no shade on the bay. The water was 30°C and offered little relief when I poured it over my head. There was no wind, nothing to shift the hot, humid air, no relief. The motionless sea reflected the sun; there was no escape. There was no sound to distract me as I sat there staring at the vomit on my kayak.
I had been taken by surprise at my stomach deciding to empty itself. I hadn’t felt ill, I’d had no stomach aches and I hadn’t lost my appetite, but nevertheless there it was, sliding off the deck.
I pulled myself together, as I still had a few hours of paddling to go. So I got going again after a big drink of water, but I soon lost it all over the side. I had another drink, and that came back up, too. The more I drank, the more I lost.
Then, as I became dehydrated, I started to get cramps. They began in my extremities, first the feet and calves, then the forearms. When cramps reached my torso I started to see things as they really were: serious.
What I think was happening was the humidity was stopping my sweat from evaporating and removing the heat from my body. So the heat used to get the water in my stomach to body temperature was thrown out, in an effort to cool down. Heat exhaustion had taken hold and I’d never experienced anything like it.
I had no choice but to endure the pain and force a path onward as my body screamed its objections. As I became more dehydrated, the cramps became more painful and widespread—I became so weak that if I’d capsized it’s doubtful I could have done much to save myself, as I could hardly move. But the longer I stayed out there, the smaller my chance of survival.
It was an agonising two hours but I managed to reach land. Unable to stand, I just fell out of the kayak then dragged myself up on all fours and started vomiting bile onto the beach. The pain I’d had to deal with consumed my body and took control as my mind realised its goal of getting me to safety was completed. Cramps meant I couldn’t get up, so I just rolled around in the shallow waters, weakly holding on to the kayak to stop it drifting away. I occasionally shifted my position to allow another empty and pointless but painful and noisy retching session to stain the clear waters of Roebuck Bay.
After a while I collapsed on my side with only my head out of the water. I thought I saw two pairs of white shoes, white socks, white legs and white shorts shuffling across the sands towards me. Christ, I knew I felt bad but I hoped I wasn’t going to see wings and halos as well. Thankfully, the white-clad beings turned out to be a couple of guests from the eco lodge whose beach I’d landed on. I saw a disapproving look as I wiped the vomit from my beard and managed a weak smile.
Within minutes one of the resort staff members, Ed, had appeared at the site of the most exciting thing to wash up at the eco lodge in a while. He’d brought a gift of an ice-cold pitcher of water. I remember him handing it to me, but he probably remembers being mugged. After gulping down the water I put the cold glass inside my shirt and held it against me. That was gold.
Unsure what to do with me, Ed helped drag my kayak up the beach. I just found some shade and lay down. I drifted in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware I was being curiously viewed by many passing legs and white shoes. It probably wasn’t a good look for the guests. Then Ed shuffled me into a nearby tent. Not the sort of tent I was used to, though. This was more like an apartment with soft walls; it had a double bed, an ensuite and fans. I proceeded to drink as much water as fast as I could, litres of the stuff in a few hours. But in spite of the incredible volume I consumed, it was fourteen hours before I managed my first pee.
It was day one of my sixteen-month journey kayaking alone around Australia; a great start.
That was one of the hardest day’s paddling I’ve ever had to do. I’m comparing it with paddling in huge seas created by strong winds and currents in the notorious waters of Bass Strait. Or kayaking with a team in 90 kilometre per hour winds in the freezing seas of Antarctica, where for a while each member thought he was the only one to have survived. Although there was no wind, surf or swell—all the traditional problems faced by a kayaker—in Roebuck Bay, I had been severely tested.
I’m sure that upon learning of my plans to circumnavigate Australia by kayak not many people at the eco lodge gave me much of a chance. Given my dramatic entrance, I can’t blame them. Word spread fast. The next day I had a visit from the local police, as the management of the lodge had a ‘duty of care’ to save me from myself. By now I’d realised I wasn’t impressing anyone with my intentions. So after a day of rest I paddled off in the relative cool of dawn, to what probably looked like an uncertain future.
I spent the next week at Port Smith, 75 kilometres south of Broome, gradually getting weaker each day, nursing what I suspected was a bladder infection. It was hot enough to make you sweat while simply sitting in the shade. I passed the time urinating every hour and mulling over the seriousness of the situation.
I realised I was lucky to have made it this far, which was not far at all. What should have been only two paddling days from Broome had taken me a week. I was now losing too much water as my bladder was working overtime—I had to get up four or five times a night and I lost count of my daytime visits to the loo.
For a few days I contemplated my disastrous start. It was easy to find people in the campground eager to regale me with stories of failure in the Kimberley, which only helped to erode my already wavering confidence and contribute to a building sense of self-doubt. But even if I ignored the tales of those who’d had to learn the harsh realities of adventure in the north of Australia, the facts were stacking up against me.
The tides were 9 metres, and it was five days of paddling to the next drinking water. I would have to cover 40–50 kilometres each day and I was drinking at least 10 litres of water a day. That meant I’d have to carry 50 litres of water; an extra 50 kilograms of weight on top of all my food and camping gear. And I was still weak and passing too much urine. It was a struggle to make it through lunch, let alone paddle a full kayak in the heat.
I’d had a taste of what it might be like to die from lack of water. The suffering and sense of hopelessness was not something I wanted to experience again. For a while I could see no way forward to overcome these problems and continue my journey. But I didn’t want to be one of the stories of failure that would be told at Port Smith, let alone give up my long-held dream to paddle around Australia. So I made the decision to head back to Broome for medical attention before starting all over again.
Map 2: The first leg—Broome to Perth,
11 April–18 June 2011
1
How it all began
I
’ve always envied those explorers of previous eras who went away for years, starting with a boat trip that itself took months, followed by a long self-sufficient adventure, then the return boat trip home. Just the journey to get to the beginning of their adventure would be more than enough excitement for most people. And while much of my life has been spent travelling the world to kayak, climb, mountain bike, hike and ski, even the longest of my trips took only four or five weeks to complete. So I’ve often wondered: Could I embark on a trip that took so long I would have to
live
the adventure every day?
I was brought up in the centre of England in a village called Frisby-on-the-Wreake. It’s about as far from the ocean as you can get in England but close to an area of outstanding natural beauty—the Peak District. This was where I developed my appreciation of the outdoors.
It all began during a school trip into the hills of the Peak District where I discovered the freedom of hiking. On reflection—after giving my parents a few anxious waits by the phone in the following months as I explored the high moors and low dales—it would have been better if I’d also discovered how to use a map and compass.
During one of my walks I was on top of a cliff watching some rock climbers. I was stunned that the first man to the top placed a couple of small wedges of metal into a rock crack, tied himself to them with what looked like flimsy bits of rope, then sat on the edge of a 50-metre drop and yelled down to his friend, ‘Safe!’
Safe! He must be kidding!
I remember backing away. I expected to see him disappear with a yelp over the edge into the abyss at any moment and I didn’t want to be part of his descent. But I was also fascinated. When the second man got to the top, the climbers had a brief conversation—‘Good?’ ‘Yep.’—as they pulled the metal wedges on which their lives had depended out of the rock crack with jaw-dropping ease.
Two weeks later I was there again, this time climbing the cliff. This was the start of twenty years of climbing rocks and mountains, first in the Peak District—clinging to rocks of dark granite, cheating gravity with only a smear of friction, or scaling the soaring, white limestone cliffs and racing to get up fingertip-shredding edges before your strength runs out—and then across Europe. I had a ball, and there was always harder, bigger and further to satisfy my youthful needs.
In the mid-80s at the age of 26, I travelled overland from home to Everest Base Camp. My eyes were opened to what was out there and I wanted more. I took jobs in England or Australia, depending on which country I was in when the money ran out. I would then save enough cash to go somewhere else, pack the job in and off I went. I managed this for about ten years, but you can’t avoid responsibility forever.
I met Sharon sometime during the 80s when we were sharing separate houses with other backpackers at Bondi Beach. Sharon had just returned to Australia after years of travelling around Europe and America. We were both born in England within a year of each other at hospitals 12 miles apart, but we met on a beach on the other side of the world. We travelled through Asia and Europe together for a couple of years before making a decision to settle down in Australia, where we knew there was space for us to spend our leisure time adventuring. After a year in South Australia we found ourselves back in Sydney with real jobs and then came the mortgage followed by the family.
After a lifetime of mountain-biking, bushwalking, rock climbing, alpine climbing and cross-country skiing, my knees packed in and I was told I had the arthritic joints of a 60-year-old at the age of 35. I had to find another way of getting out and about. In 1997 I attended a climbing festival at Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, feeling a bit down at the time as I was moping about on crutches. I listened to a presentation where someone mentioned a Bass Strait crossing by kayak. And the lights came on! Finally, a way to get about which could save my rickety legs, a new medium: water.
When I bought my first kayak I also picked up Paul Caffyn’s book
The Dreamtime Voyage
, the tale of the first circumnavigation of Australia by kayak, undertaken in 1982. As my own kayak trips got more adventurous, I started to think more and more about following in Caffyn’s wake. My trips were all solo and included a Bass Strait crossing, a paddle from Sydney to Melbourne and then the west coast of Tasmania. Then in early 2006 I found myself paddling in Antarctica with Andrew McAuley and Lawrence Geoghegan, kayaking unsupported from the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula 800 kilometres down to the Antarctic Circle.
To get to Antarctica, Andrew, Lawrence and I sailed from Ushuaia, which is on the southern tip of South America. For the first few hours of idyllic sailing through the fjords of Patagonia we were all planning to sell our houses and buy yachts. A few hours later, while passing Cape Horn in rough seas, we were all throwing up and looking forward to death. We would have sold our houses there and then just to get to dry land.
We set off with incredibly heavy kayaks loaded up with five weeks of food and fuel plus everything else needed to paddle the southern polar region. The coastline was an inhospitable mix of rocks and ice with landing spots few and far between. Before we left we had been unable to find much topographical information about the coastline, just what we could deduce from the nautical charts. Even the sprinkling of bases set up to legitimise a country’s claim to Antarctica couldn’t help us as people rarely ventured further than a few kilometres from the huts.
Our first day of kayaking started with optimistic farewells and off we paddled in the light winds of an overcast day. A few hours later we were crossing ice cliffs, created by a glacier which dropped into the ocean after running down from the hills, when we felt a puff of cold air. Within moments it was every man for himself as we fought for our lives in winds that we estimated were more than 90 kilometres per hour—katabatic winds, formed when dense cold air gathers over the ice sheet to a point where, without warning, it ‘falls’ down off the ice.
The waves were short and steep but they reached over at shoulder height, dropping bits of ice the size of footballs onto the kayak decks with a sickening sound. It was freezing, and almost impossible to manoeuvre the kayaks as the wind was in control. We quickly lost sight of each other as we all did what we could to retreat to our starting point. Eventually, as I rounded a corner, I caught up with Lawrence, who had thought he was the only one to survive. Then we spent a worrying few hours at the starting point until Andy returned. It was about as close as you can get to a total disaster, making our day on the yacht in rough seas look like a walk in the park.
The trip continued to be an adventure for us as we paddled further south than had been previously achieved by kayak. The winds challenged us a few times, but we’d learnt our lesson and didn’t get caught out as badly again. Paddling through ice floes, however, gave us another scare. As we dodged between small bergs about the size of trucks, the current picked up and started shuffling them around. They bumped and ground against each other as giant, icy teeth chewing kayakers would. Not able to see where open water was, we just headed for any clear path as the sea breathed and the bergs parted. But the paths were clear enough for only one or two of us to get through, and we were soon separated. It was terrifying, and again we were each unsure of the fate of the other team members until we met up on a life-saving island: a big pile of penguin poo.
As the brief Antarctic summer was coming to an end, it got cold enough for us to witness the sea starting to freeze over and the abundant wildlife head north. It really was a great adventure, but paddling in the hard conditions with two younger men made me realise that if I was going to kayak around Australia I’d have to get a move on before age took more of a hold.
So I came home and started to plan my circumnavigation of Australia.
Plans and problems
In my mind the main problems were:
The cliffs
The Zuytdorp Cliffs in Western Australia are 200 kilometres long with one possible landing spot at False Entrance, 30 kilometres from the start. The wind blows the wrong way most of the time and, being open to the Indian Ocean, things can get rough. These cliffs and the wind can be obstacles for large boats and are the most difficult obstacles facing someone on a kayak trip around Australia.
Coming in a close second are the Baxter and Bunda cliffs, 160 and 190 kilometres long, found on the south coast in the Great Australian Bight. These cliffs are remote and very long, but you’re less likely to encounter the headwinds or rough seas of Zuytdorp Cliffs. Still, when you’re talking about paddling a loaded kayak for over 34 hours nonstop in a remote area, they have to be considered major obstacles.
Cyclones
The north of Australia has a cyclone season from November to April. The cyclones bring wet, hot, humid and stormy weather, so it’s called the ‘Wet Season’ or just ‘the Wet’, which is quite snappy and apt. My plan was to approach the north at the end of the Wet to miss the bad stuff but also make the most of the fresh water that had fallen.
Winds
The success or failure of a kayaker’s day is determined by the wind—how strong it is, which direction it blows, and the ocean conditions it generates. In the nautical world wind speed is measured in knots; 1 knot is 1.8 kilometres per hour. To circumnavigate Australia anticlockwise meant I would make the most of the southeasterly trade winds in Queensland and the Northern Territory, but I’d have to work my way into the winds down the coast of Western Australia. The south coast has winds that blow generally southwest in the winter and southeast during the summer. So although it would be a bit cold and I’d catch a storm or two, the spring was my choice for the south coast. New South Wales was my home ground; I’d face northeast winds in the summer, but I knew they were manageable. The good news was that, apart from the western side of Cape York Peninsula, I would have the winds with me from Brisbane all the way across the top to Broome.
The Great Australian Bight
This is a long section of serious coastline which, as well as including the two sets of cliffs, is open to the southwest swell. No rivers or streams flow into the Bight from the Nullarbor Plain, because of the low rainfall and the limestone nature of the plain. The little rain that does fall on it either evaporates or drains beneath the surface. There was one settlement at Eucla at the border of Western Australia and South Australia, but I was unsure of the availability of drinking water elsewhere in the Bight and there was a real possibility I would be trapped by big surf on a remote beach. If this happened, it would be a real problem. Without support, or anybody passing by, my only option would be to last as long as I could on my supplies and hope the weather would improve.
The tropics
The tropics have very pleasant conditions during the winter months, but can be a bit hot in the summer. As well as the heat sucking the water out of me, I was worried it would accelerate any infections from cuts, bites and rashes. Still, it’s nice in the north, so nice that crocodiles, sharks and other potentially life-threatening wildlife have made their homes in the area . . .
Wildlife
As part of my preparation I attended a remote-area first-aid course and learnt about what could bite, sting, poison or eat me. The more I looked into it, the longer the list got, so I concentrated on the more common ways wildlife could ruin my day.
The more glamorous problems were sharks and crocodiles. My ace plan for sharks was to stick two eyes on the bottom of the kayak at the stern. Sharks like the element of surprise and will approach from behind, so if they think they’ve been seen they can back off. Adding a couple of eyes to the kayak was a simple, cheap and no-maintenance solution. The only problem was that it has been scientifically proven not to be a deterrent. Still, for the cost of two stickers I figured it was worth a go. (As it turned out, I only got hit by sharks in murky water, possibly because they couldn’t see my false eyes.)
Crocodiles were a bit more of a concern. My initial fact-finding attempts were frustrated by conflicting information. So I decided I wouldn’t think about them. Saltwater crocs were only a problem north of Mackay in Queensland, which was a long way from my starting point in Broome, so if I made it that far that I’d have to worry about crocs, I’d be happy I’d made it so far. Later, while in a more practical frame of mind, I decided the best information would come from those who paddled with crocs, so I planned to ask Queensland kayakers when I met them.
I thought the less glamorous wildlife would be more of a problem. Jellyfish, mosquitoes, sandflies, ticks, stepping on coral and things that lived in the coral . . . I’d just have to avoid where I could and deal with as needed.
Motivation and fitness
It’s hard to imagine the sort of physical and mental preparation needed to paddle a kayak alone for over a year along a remote and dangerous coastline. Usually, one of the first tasks to come to mind is to get yourself superfit and skilled in the kayak. But these were way down on my list.
I try to stay fit generally but for this adventure I didn’t do any extra training. I couldn’t see the point. The fitness I’d worked on over the past 30 years would be the foundation stone of the trip, and any fitness gained a few months before leaving would last only a few days. The extra fitness I needed would develop as I became accustomed to paddling day after day, while making sure I didn’t wear myself out, by taking care of myself, eating properly and resting.
As for my skills in a sea kayak, I felt comfortable in most conditions and situations. I could also recognise the conditions and situations I didn’t feel comfortable in, and avoid them. My previous trips had allowed me to refine my paddling. It’s easy to find flaws in technique when you’re repeating the same movement hundreds of times a day. The warning signs come in the form of aches and pains that, at first, are annoying but soon becoming debilitating to the point that it’s impossible to continue. After thirteen years I’d been through the various stages of kayaking and found a style that suited me and allowed me to get where I wanted without any side-effects. Basically, if I was worried about my ability in a kayak, then I shouldn’t even be preparing for a trip of this difficulty.
