All the Way Round (11 page)

Binge dropped me off at the campground and in the last of the daylight I wandered to the lookout over the Nullarbor Plain. The view was astounding. I could see a huge distance out to the west and beyond that I could see the headlights of the rare truck emerging from the dark. It was a uniform, flat, featureless, waterless, vast and empty place. All of a sudden I felt its remoteness. Although I was at the small town of Eucla, and in the first hour since arriving I had seen more people than I had for the past month, the isolation engulfed me.

While paddling I could only see about 5 kilometres ahead as the land was so flat, and my world was only 10 kilometres from horizon to horizon. I wasn’t covering thousands of kilometres of bitumen surrounded by hostile country; I was moving my 10-kilometre bubble along the coastline day after day. The realisation of where I’d travelled in my bubble hadn’t been real on the map but standing on the escarpment it hit home.

I needed to recover and plan the next stage. Eucla is where Wylie Scarp reaches the coast again and forms the Bunda Cliffs. These cliffs run 190 kilometres from the border of Western Australia and South Australia to a small bump in the coast called the Head of the Bight. The crossing of the Baxter Cliffs had made me painfully aware of the fine line I was treading during these marathon stages. If things go as well as you can expect, it’s just bloody hard; when things go badly . . . well, I really didn’t want to go anywhere near that experience again.

The food parcel I’d ordered over the phone at the Eyre Bird Observatory had already been delivered to Eucla. In it were enough supplies to get me to the next shops at Ceduna. I took what I needed for my wait at Eucla and to get me across Bunda Cliffs, and sent the remainder to the Nullarbor Roadhouse. The roadhouse was conveniently placed at the end of the cliffs and where I intended to rest after the crossing. I also sent my deck bag, desalinator and sponsons with the excess food, hoping I wouldn’t need any of them.

Sponsons are two big airbags held together by straps. They are used to make the kayak stable, so you can rest without rolling over or even stand up without fear of capsize. You simply place a bag on either side of the kayak, with the straps running under the hull, then inflate them. It takes about twenty minutes to deploy or pack up, but works very well. Getting rid of the sponsons was a bit of a gamble. In some situations they would be invaluable. I came close to having to use them during the crossing of Baxter Cliffs to get me through the night and so I knew their value. But they were also partly the cause of my problems and I thought one less piece of kit to lighten my load would make things easier so I wouldn’t need them.

The desalinator was a 3-kilogram bit of kit which I wouldn’t need during this crossing. I carried it in case I was stuck on a beach with no access to fresh water. However, on a surf beach it’s almost useless. It couldn’t be used in the surf zone as it would suck up sand which would clog it up, so I would have to collect sea water in something first. The only thing with enough volume was the kayak itself, which meant I would have to fill the cockpit, drag the kayak up the beach then pump away. It was better than being thirsty but it was hard work.

I rang the Nullarbor Roadhouse to let them know the parcels were coming and to ask if they could hold them until I crossed the cliffs. I also asked if someone could come and pick me up from the beach when I finished the cliffs, as it was 30 kilometres to the roadhouse. Half an hour after the truck had left with my supplies, as I was sitting down with my bacon and eggs and coffee, I got a call from the manager of the Nullarbor Roadhouse.

We started with the usual friendly chat about what I was doing, but after I confirmed my plans to paddle the Bunda Cliffs he showed his true colours. As a member of the local State Emergency Services (SES), he was advising me against paddling the cliffs. At first I took it in a good-natured manner, explaining that I’d done this stuff before and had already paddled from Broome etc., thinking my experience would put him at ease. Not so. He said he didn’t want to spend the night looking for my corpse. To enforce his point, I was told that I would be entering a Grade 1 Marine Park and as such I would be fined and have my kayak confiscated. Also, I would be entering Aboriginal land without a permit and would be fined for trespass. He would not be sending anybody to pick me up as he would then be aiding and abetting a crime.

Numbly I went back to my breakfast. I’d had many ‘Rather you than me’ comments over the past months and had heard the good-humoured ‘You’re nuts’ more often than I liked, but this was the first time anybody had threatened me.

I’ve conveniently forgotten how I ended the phone call, but I think I must have made an impression because half an hour later I had the first of three phone calls from the appropriate government department, confirming that I would indeed be fined, have to pay court costs and have my kayak confiscated.

The official government objection was me entering a marine park during the whale breeding season. I explained I was in a kayak, which didn’t represent too much of a threat to the whales and the dozens I’d passed so far hadn’t seemed too traumatised by my presence. They wouldn’t budge, but they did offer some very unhelpful solutions.

The first suggestion was to paddle around the marine park. This meant that, as well as covering the 190 kilometres along the length of the cliffs, I’d have to paddle hundreds of kilometres out to sea to ensure I didn’t enter the protected zone.

The second was to get a letter of exemption from the Minister of the Environment. But an election had been held the day before and not even the Minister of the Environment knew who he was! Even if I managed to track him down, I’m not sure one of the first tasks of a new minister would be to reply immediately to a kayaker stuck in the middle of the Nullarbor, seeking exemption to travel through a whale sanctuary.

The third solution was to wait until October when the whale breeding season ends. The whales would then be swimming to Antarctica, running the gauntlet of Japanese harpoons and whatever other dangers face a whale in the Southern Ocean. The whales would no doubt be thinking to themselves, ‘Lucky we dodged that kayak back in the Great Australian Bight!’ To top it off, from November commercial fishing starts up in this Grade 1 Marine Park.

I thanked my contact in the government department for their suggestions, all of which were impractical, impossible or just plain stupid, and felt my resolve harden.

Then the local police wandered over from the station and paid me a visit. By this time I’d had enough, so they got a spray and cleared off. This all happened on a Saturday, four hours after I’d called the roadhouse advising them of my parcel. You try getting three phone calls, within two hours, from a government department, at any time let alone weekends, it can’t be done. I was honoured. I was also dangerously pissed off and decided to go for a walk to calm down.

I knew that the government department was just following the rule book, and the police were just covering their arses, but I was furious that somebody who didn’t know me, and had probably no idea about kayaking, seemed to be doing what he could to prevent me carrying out my plans. There was no way he was going to stop me, but he’d made my life harder than I needed. Of course, there would be no avoiding this guy, as I had to pick up my food and spend at least three days recovering at the roadhouse before carrying on. I knew that when we met I’d be tired and with a short fuse—not a good combination. There would be fireworks. But I wanted an explanation face to face.

I knew that if anything went wrong on the crossing, regardless of whether I lived or died, there would be a line of people queuing up to bag me out. The police, the government and the SES would all be able to justify their behaviour. They would have licence to say whatever they liked, with the proof I hadn’t made it, and I would be defenceless against their opinions. If I made it I wouldn’t be given another thought.

Those days at Eucla were a trying time. The phone calls, attention from the police, comments from the locals and 30-knot winds were all chipping away at me. As distracting as it was I had to remain focused on the weather. That was the real danger I faced.

The weather was marginal for the next few days but worth a go. I planned to leave on Monday 13 September. The forecast for Tuesday was southwest to southeast winds at 10–20 knots. Wednesday had south to southeast winds at 5–15 knots. Thursday the wind would shift to the southeast, bringing headwinds of 10–15 knots in the afternoon and increasing in strength over the next few days. This meant that crossing the cliffs on Wednesday would give me 29 hours of acceptable weather. With an average speed of 6 kilometres per hour I would need 32 hours to paddle the 190 kilometres to the Head of the Bight, assuming the weather didn’t change sooner than expected. It wasn’t ideal, but if I didn’t take this opportunity I would have to wait days, perhaps weeks, for my next chance.

I was keen to get going. I’d had enough of the bureaucracy, which seemed particularly alien in these surroundings. It definitely had a wearing effect on me, but I was buggered if someone on the end of the phone was going to stop me now. I knew that as soon as I got moving again I’d feel better about the task ahead. To placate the bureaucrats, though, I decided to let the police know I was heading off and when to expect me to call from the Head of the Bight.

On Monday Binge gave me a lift back down to the jetty. He had been a commercial fisherman in the area and although he thought I was nuts, he hated the idea of the government trying to stop me from killing myself along the cliffs.

I didn’t get far that Monday. I started paddling at 4.30 pm and then a front came through, forcing me to seek shelter and call it a day. I was only 6 kilometres from the Eucla jetty. However, in my mind I had achieved a much greater distance—I was no longer under the influence of others, and although I sat with the tent flysheet wrapped around me, behind a shallow dune in the rain and wind, I felt more relaxed than I had at Eucla.

Tuesday I took it easy and reached the cliffs just after high tide. The beach close to the cliffs looked as though it sported a few rocks so I backtracked to a spot that was clear of obstacles. As I surfed in to what looked like a soft landing, I spotted a rock shelf right in my path. I put the brakes on, pausing just long enough to allow the surf to drown the shelf again, and paddled over it to land. After a few hours when the tide had dropped a bit more, I saw the entire coast was defended by the rock shelf that ran parallel to the beach; it was sticking up from the water, 30 metres offshore and stretching as far as I could see east and west.

I knew that it would be low tide on Wednesday morning and the reef would be exposed with the surf destroying itself relentlessly upon it, making any sort of launch impossible until high tide. I went for a walk down the beach and found a small gap in the reef. It was only about two kayak lengths wide but was my only chance for an early escape. I would have to be on my way by 8 am. If I left it any later I would be faced with the 10–15 knot southeast winds from a high pressure system that wouldn’t move on for days. So in the dying hours of daylight I set up camp by the gap, and had a fitful sleep of five hours listening to the surf pound the reef.

Next morning I was up at 4.30, an hour before any daylight. I was confused by the four time zones I had to deal with. I’d just crossed the border of South Australia and Western Australia, so South Australian time, West Australian time, Eastern Standard Time (which I used for forecasts and for calls home), all conspired with the local Central Standard Time to make sure I got up too early to see anything.

In darkness I packed up the tent and paced the beach, listening to the surf with a dread of what I would see. I knew the tide was dropping, exposing the reef. When daylight came I could see the waves rising steeply before smashing into the reef. My heart dropped. I stood little chance of powering through the waves. The bigger ones could throw the kayak, bow over stern, back onto the reef. If I had to swim, I would be between the open ocean and the reef. If I managed to stay in the kayak and tried to land again, I would have to get past the wall of rock. There wasn’t much chance of the kayak making it in one piece and I wasn’t too sure I’d do too well, either.

The ocean was spilling over the reef for a long way up and down the beach, all that water was then running back out through the gap I’d found, at quite a pace. That would give me a fast exit, but it was where the waves were at their steepest as they rolled in against the outward flow. After watching for about an hour, mindful that if I didn’t get away by eight I would be paddling into a headwind for the last stages of the cliff crossing, I decided it was too dangerous and I would have to give in and truck the kayak round to Ceduna. It was all over.

Then I saw a chance. Although I didn’t consciously make a decision, in my mind a blanket was thrown over reason and consequence long enough for me to act. I lined up the kayak, sat down and snapped on the spray skirt as the current drew me into the waves. As the flow took hold, there was no stopping, no return and no plan B. From the kayak all I could see was the first wave ahead, not what was coming beyond that. I just dug in for all I was worth, and reached the first wave before it broke. From the top I could see the second wave approaching; head down and with arms aching, I went at it. From the top of the third wave, I could only see rolling ocean; my arms were being forced on in pain but a few more strokes and I was through.

It was probably the most dangerous surf exit of the trip, but with the psychological pressures put on me at Eucla, to have failed and returned would have been almost as painful as the rocks. Sitting outside the breakers, there was no time to have anything other than a quick celebratory bar of chocolate before turning east and starting my 190-kilometre paddle towards the Head of the Bight and an uncertain welcome.

As usual I split my crossing into six-hour segments. In the first six hours I managed 45 kilometres, the second 40 kilometres. I then slowed down even more as night fell and paddling got a little harder. There was a sliver of moon that showed itself for the first half of the night, and then the lights from the trucks crossing the Nullarbor helped me orientate a bit. Although I could see the traffic I was still as remote as it gets. If I got in trouble, there was nobody to help. The fishing season hadn’t started so there were no commercial fishermen. There are very few places to launch a boat for hundreds of kilometres and no way out because of the cliffs. (This made me wonder how the guy at the roadhouse was going to spend the night looking for me even if he had been helpful.) Any helicopter rescue would probably have to wait until daylight, but I assumed I was out of their range anyway. The water was cold enough to make surviving the night out of the kayak unlikely, so there could be no mistakes.