All the Way Round (4 page)

The fish were also swimming blind, and wary of big things in the water. They would launch themselves airborne in an effort to escape the kayak. I took jumping fish in the head and body and then a big one got me in the throat. I’m not sure who was more surprised, the fish or me, as I swept them off the spray deck back into the sea.

The shark hits at night were quite spectacular as they stirred up the phosphorescence. Most were 3–4 foot reef sharks that lit up the waters behind me as they hit the rudder. However, some displays were on a grander scale as bigger tiger sharks had their turn. I would feel the kayak shudder then my whole world lit up for a few seconds as if a car was shining high beams at the hull.

Just before I landed at the Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park I took a big shark hit. A few recently arrived holiday-makers were happily swimming in the low surf. As I stood next to the kayak, chatting to the interested bystanders, I noticed half my rudder was missing. I took a closer look and pointed out to the swimmers that a shark had bitten off a chunk just as I was landing. They didn’t say anything about it but shot a few nervous glances at each other before taking a couple of steps further up the beach.

From the kayak Eighty Mile Beach was hardly a dramatic feature, Australia was barely a smudge of colour. There were no hills struggling up from the plains. It was rare to see a tree poke up inland, so when I saw one I would stare at it for hours as I drifted past on my paddle south.

The retreating tides had left nothing on the beach to interrupt the flow of sand from one horizon to the other. The gently sloping beach ran between the harsh grass struggling up the low dunes on one side and the restless ocean rolling in and out on the other. Among the fine sands lay delicate, bleached shells scattered like stars, but the beach was empty of anything else, even shade.

The caravan park at Eighty Mile Beach had been described to me as a lush oasis with plenty of shady trees. However, I was a little late for that as the park had taken a direct hit from a category-5 hurricane a few months earlier. Almost all the trees were gone apart from a few that had been pruned to stumps. The owner told me he spent a terrifying few days locked in a shipping container as the storm passed by. He had stories of shells being found embedded in trees a hundred metres inland and showed me photos of the devastation—I was in awe of the power of the storm. Luckily for me the guys who were rebuilding the place found time to reshape my rudder and fashion a spare from a fence paling.

After a day of rest I was set to tackle the second half of Eighty Mile Beach, which would bring me to the sandbanks of the De Grey River estuary before paddling to Port Hedland, a section of 250 kilometres. So, with several days of paddling looming, I was up at 4 am and packing the kayak in the pitch black. I was astounded to find one of the guys staying at the park had gotten up to wish me well and offer me a hand getting my stuff to the beach—for which I was especially grateful as the tides weren’t quite so convenient on this occasion.

With the 8-metre tidal range and a shallow beach, the water moves in and out at a slow walking pace; this may not sound like much, but in terms of tidal movement it’s huge. To help win the race I’d use the invaluable trolley system specially designed for the kayak to be pulled to the water. The trolley system supplied with my kayak is made up of two metal tubes and two wheels from a golf cart. You stick a wheel on one end of the tubing, put the other end into a purpose-built hole in the kayak then use cord to hold it in place. It’s light, simple and effective, and it packs away neatly with the wheels attached on the back deck. However, to ensure the trolley system lasted the whole trip I’d offload the heavier items like food and water to take the strain off the wheels. This meant I’d have to go back to pick up my stuff, and by the time I’d returned to the kayak the sea had retreated a further 100 metres—a game of catch-up. Sometimes I’d find myself almost a kilometre from my camp before getting on the water.

After leaving the caravan park I started to relax and get into a daily routine. I had been struggling as my body adjusted to the rigours of being outdoors and paddling for 7–8 hours each day. But I soon got settled into the repetition of packing up, getting everything to the water, paddling all day, landing at a campsite, unpacking and setting up. Despite the sharks, I was pleased with the way things were going and I felt like I’d gathered momentum after my bad start from Broome.

At Port Hedland I found a caravan park close to the water. As I dived into the tent I kicked in a clump of leaves, which I couldn’t be bothered to kick back out again. What I didn’t know was that with the leaves came a spider whose bite was way out of proportion to its size. It had enough of me as I unknowingly booted it around the tent and as a result I had a foot which throbbed painfully from its reprimanding bite.

Stupidly I’d also managed to camp next to some sprinklers which set themselves off in the middle of the night and pounded one side of the tent for hours. But the main reason for my sleep-deprivation wasn’t sprinklers, it was backpackers partying next to my tent. Now I’m mindful of all the people I must have annoyed with the aid of alcohol in my youth while camping around the world. I see such disturbances as a penalty I have to pay on their behalf. But come midnight my dues were paid and I got out of the dry side of the tent and limped over to strongly suggest the backpackers shut up. Although English wasn’t their first language, they got the message. I was satisfied with the result but I didn’t make much effort to keep quiet during my early morning start.

I had a couple of days of 30-knot winds going my way after leaving Port Hedland. These created short, sharp waves that made for very wet paddling. I couldn’t open my hatch cover to get food for fear of it filling with water. The wind did mean I travelled a lot quicker, but it was just as tiring as paddling with no wind.

One evening as I rested at a camp spot I was rewarded with what is known as the ‘Stairway to the Moon’. This is a phenomenon caused as a rising full moon reflects on the rippling, exposed mudflats at an extremely low tide, creating the beautiful optical illusion of a staircase reaching up to the moon.

A shortcut to Dampier is Searipple Passage, a channel splitting the Burrup Peninsula. This was a great spot, though slightly tarnished as the mountains of rocks all the same shape and size were evidence the area had been mined. I guess when all the goodies had been dug up the area was abandoned, and with no further value it was then called a nature reserve.

Here, there was lots of life in the water. A fish that had been sheltering under the kayak was chased out into the open by a shark, which then propelled itself and the fish clean out of the water, giving me a bit of an aerial show. Later, while I was having dinner, I was entertained by dugongs diving for the seagrass at low tide, much better than anything I could have found on the TV.

A dugong is roughly the size and shape of a large dolphin, but with a less streamlined head and no dorsal fin. It’s the only herbivorous mammal that is strictly marine; their closest aquatic relatives are the manatees. Amazingly, dugongs are more closely related to elephants than to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.

Seeing my first dugong was something I had been eagerly anticipating. Encountering new wildlife was a major reason for my trip. I was travelling through a part of the world I’d never been to and was seeing some of the wildlife for the first time. Dugongs, sawfish patrolling the shore, strange-looking dolphins and many sorts of fish were all new and exciting to me.

Next day I found that Searipple Passage emptied of water at low tide. It wasn’t long, however, before the tide was rushing back in to flood the rocks, making it a passage again. As the tide flowed in I drifted towards rocks that retreated under the water as fast as I was advancing. I wasn’t the only one making the most of the free ride; there were turtles, small sharks and many fish moving in as well. It was as if I was floating over my own giant aquarium, watching animals working in harmony with the tides.

A few kilometres further on I found myself at the port of Dampier and was faced with huge jetties, boat traffic, railways, harbours and mountains of muddy brown iron ore and stark white salt waiting to be fed into the waiting ships, all of which were impatient to sail off with their little part of Australia. It was a real contrast to drifting over a reef bustling with wildlife a few hours earlier.

After moving away from the evidence of mining I really enjoyed the 200-kilometre stretch from Dampier to Onslow. There were so many islands scattered around you could hop between them with no need to land on the coast. Most of the islands were only a kilometre across, with perhaps a few low trees cowering from the winds in small clumps as far from the sea as they could get. Surrounded on all sides by friendly beaches and with good camping, the islands were just calling for a visit.

Another reason I was happy to leave the mainland for the first of the islands was because I’d been plagued by flies. But several of them decided to come along for a ride. After a day’s paddling I was down to three flies and felt a bit responsible for their predicament. There were no flies on the islands, so I know my three didn’t go too far from camp. In the morning there was only one, so I left a small pile of my breakfast for it. On reflection solo paddling has a bit to answer for.

Apart from my three flies there was plenty of wildlife around the islands to keep things interesting. Little sharks sporting their fin tips out of the water, sawfish shuffling along in the shallows, fish jumping 3–4 metres out of the water, and rays and turtles casually cruising. Some islands looked a bit like bombing ranges with all the turtle nests dug out of the beaches.

This was one of the most pleasant sections of the entire trip for me. Tailwinds helped me bounce from island to island for some noodles and a rest. It was trouble-free kayaking, except that most of the islands were so low-lying you couldn’t see them until they were only about 5 kilometres away. And, because my GPS had a hissy fit and froze, I was navigating with a compass and topographic maps that didn’t detail the location of the islands very clearly. But there was no real danger if I got it wrong, apart from a dent in my pride, so I enjoyed going back to the basics of navigation. Finding a particular low-lying island the size of two football pitches after paddling for six hours is satisfying and a great reward at the end of the day.

I have a love–hate relationship with my GPS. Although today it’s almost unthinkable, even irresponsible, to head off without one, I’ve spent many years mountaineering, cross-country skiing, bushwalking and sea kayaking, much of it in very rugged and tricky areas, without the convenience. I’d also learnt the dangers of becoming too reliant on them.

A few years earlier, I was attempting a crossing of Bass Strait with my first GPS. Things didn’t go well. I was paddling against a strong current, with 35-knot winds and waves so big they often broke over me. I checked my GPS after six hours and found I was further from my destination than when I started! To make things worse, my kayak at the time was old and leaking, most of my food for the crossing was soaked and inedible, and my pump wasn’t working, so the cockpit was filling with the cold Southern Ocean. It is probably obvious I should have turned around and headed back to my start point before things got as bad as they did. But when you decide to look for adventure in rough areas you should be prepared to endure, overcome and persist to achieve your goal. The trick is to know when to quit. It pays to be stubborn sometimes; it also pays to be able to reassess the situation. What finally made me turn around and head back was that my GPS packed it in—I had become so reliant on it that I couldn’t imagine continuing without it.

I landed and knew I’d had a close call, but nevertheless I was furious with myself for failing, and despite all the red flags I saw my reliance on the GPS as my greatest weakness. I didn’t use one again until I decided to paddle around Australia. In fact, I actually started the circumnavigation without one, but after my close call on the first day I decided even a small mistake could kill me, so I relented and bought one.

Even though things were going well, the tough days brought me back down to earth and the enormity of the task at hand was sinking in. The reality of covering 17,000 kilometres and paddling for over a year was still hard to comprehend.

I dared not allow myself the luxury to think I could finish. I was already worrying about the Zuytdorp Cliffs, which were still 650 kilometres south, and even the Great Australian Bight, which was months away, was on my mind.

So that I didn’t continue to be intimidated by the distance and obstacles ahead, I split up the trip into sections then into subsections. The sections were approximately a month apart and would be determined by places where I could restock food and rest if needed. The subsections were areas between drinking water supplies or major obstacles such as cliffs or a cape where the weather could be an issue.

This worked well and was quite motivating as I felt I was making progress on each section, although in the scale of things it was a drop in the ocean, so to speak. Concentrating on each section at a time meant I didn’t dwell too much on the problems in the following sections until I had to.

My sections in this area were Broome to Onslow, approximately 1000 kilometres, Onslow to Carnarvon, approximately 600 kilometres, then Carnarvon to Perth, approximately 900 kilometres.

Onslow was the end of the first section. I’d covered my first 1000 kilometres, and managed it in my estimate of a month, despite losing a week at the start. I was pleased with this milestone and celebrated by sneaking into a caravan park and treating myself to a shower.

When planning the trip I didn’t envisage too many problems getting from Broome to North West Cape. This was based on my assumption that surf, strong winds, cold conditions and big seas were the main challenges facing a sea kayaker, none of which should be a problem on this section. What my imagination had failed to see were the actual problems I encountered—heat, humidity, huge tides, sharks, reefs and food supplies—coupled with the fact that I was drinking double the water I had allowed. My lessons were sharp and painful and would not be forgotten.