All the Way Round (12 page)

At dawn I still had 50 kilometres to go. That was hard to face.

The mind plays a big part in these long days. During my preparation my head filled with negative thoughts as I went through all the what-if scenarios. Once I was out on the water, it would be a waste of time and energy to worry about things that I couldn’t do anything about. So I thought about issues that might arise before it was too late and did what I could to plan for them. Because of my preparation, as soon as I was committed to the physical challenge, these bad situations dissolved from my imagination; I knew it was going to be hard but felt confident that I’d make it.

During the crossings when things got difficult I didn’t give myself the chance to have negative thoughts. When things started going wrong I’d concentrate on solving the problem. For example, if I was overwhelmed with tiredness I’d think about eating, drinking or perhaps taking a caffeine tablet, or even simple things like estimating how long it was until the next stop, or when dawn would break, or concentrating on my paddle technique. Any negative thinking, any doubts that I was going to make it, would just exhaust me further and help to make my fears a reality.

I should add that this was an unconscious process, not something I actually planned to do before or during the trip. It occurred to me later, while I was writing this book, but it has made me realise the value of preparation and being able to think under pressure.

One problem I had on these crossings, which I hadn’t solved, was reflux. After about twenty hours of paddling I lost my appetite and started bringing up stomach acid. I figured my body was running on empty, I was dehydrated and my stomach needed more water to digest the food. I tried to drink more but in the end I was forcing it down and still didn’t feel hungry. On this crossing I’d drunk 12 litres but was still struggling to get food into me.

At 2 pm I saw the ranger station at the Head of Bight, I was aching and spent, and I swore I would never again paddle more than 100 kilometres in one go. During planning I was a little worried about the landing on what looked like an open beach but was encouraged after looking up the blog of Freya Hoffmeister, who was the last person to land there. She had described it as a perfectly safe beach. As I weaved in and out of whales towards the building surf, I thought, ‘It must calm down as you get closer.’ Nope! There was a rock in the middle of the beach, which looked uncommonly like a skull. I wondered if that was ominous. It turned out that to the west of the ‘skull’ the beach was lined with reefs and to the east it was sand, but I couldn’t see this from the approach; because the west was closer to the ranger station, that was my choice. It was a great way to end a 30-hour paddle—jumping out of the kayak with wobbly legs into the surf, then crawling over rocks, battling with the waves and trying not to put a hole in the kayak or break my leg.

After getting into dry clothes, my first priority was to let people know I had landed and all was well. I used Terry’s satellite phone to call the police at Eucla. Strangely, they asked if I was going to let the South Australian police know I was safe. I told them ‘No’, but then thought nothing of it. I also rang Alaine Davin, who works with Terry at Canoeing Down Under; Terry was on another adventure in America and Alaine had agreed to be my contact. She calmly acknowledged my safe landing and said she’d let Sharon know.

My next call was to Terry Hardy, the ranger at the Head of the Bight whale-watching site. I was unsure if he’d been made aware of my ‘invasion’ and was prepared for a frosty reception, but I was keen for help to get off the beach and to my food parcel. After a short conversation he drove down to the beach and, to my relief, turned out to be a ‘real’ person, a far cry from the government robots I’d been dealing with. Terry understood my situation and said he would be back in the morning to give me a lift to the roadhouse.

At 4 pm, two hours after I landed, the southeast headwinds I’d been dreading blew in. They picked up to 20 knots, and blew for days.

Next morning, after I’d used the last of my water for breakfast, Terry turned up with one of the most welcome mugs of coffee I’ve ever drunk. He then took me to the Head of the Bight whale-watching station. It was quite a journey of contrasts—the twenty-minute drive from the windswept beach that had taken me four days of tough paddling to reach, to the air-conditioned station with running water, coffee machine and tourists. At the station you could stroll down the walkway to see the whales in the distance, drink water, wash your hands with soap after the toilet, buy a pie and then drive your caravan away. It was luxury.

Even though I was utterly exhausted with not an ounce of energy left, I still had one more obstacle to face—the manager of the Nullarbor Roadhouse. After what I’d just made myself do, I was not in a sympathetic frame of mind. So, as Terry drove me to pick up my supplies, I steeled myself for a confrontation . . . only to be informed at the roadhouse that the manager had thankfully taken himself away on holiday.

I rang home that evening to find my wife had been awoken at 2 am on the night of my crossing by the local police asking if I’d reported in. Someone had set off flares at a beach party about 200 kilometres from the cliffs, which had been seen by a ship. They reported it and word got to Eucla police who tried to ring my satellite phone, which was turned off, then Sharon’s mobile, which was also turned off. They then rang our local police station, who sent two policemen round to pay her a visit. Sharon knew I was tackling the cliffs and she knew a visit from the police at 2 am would not be to pass on their congratulations for a job well done. Of course she thought the worst. The South Australian police were involved because the flare was originally reported to them, which was why I was asked to ring them to let them know I was okay. Alaine was also contacted, but to her credit she didn’t tell me about this when I called in at the end of the cliffs; she knew I’d be shattered and that nothing would be gained.

I always try my best not to get the family involved in any of the hardships during my adventures. If I thought they were sitting around the phone worrying about me while I was making myself comfortable as I waited for the weather to change, I would have extra pressure on me to make a move. There’s not much they can do but worry about what might have happened. If things had gone badly then there’s even less they can do. So either way there’s nothing to be gained by getting them involved. But on this occasion things happened that were out of my control, wheels turned and imaginations were left to run wild.

I was at the Nullarbor Roadhouse for four days. One of the positives of recovering there is that it’s a great place to meet travellers. I met a Kiwi cycling across Australia, a couple circumnavigating the country in a small plane, a lady running around Australia, and all sorts of people driving on their way to somewhere far off. In the evenings I spent my time watching the caravan park fill up, then in the morning I’d have breakfast while it emptied, and in between I’d check on the weather; the wind was still blowing southeast with no change apart from a slight drop in strength.

Sharon’s side of the story

On that cold Blue Mountains night, I had been sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning, thinking about Stuart who I knew at that very moment was taking on one of the toughest sections of his around-Australia odyssey, the Bunda Cliffs in the Great Australian Bight. I was nervous and anxious about him crossing this unforgiving stretch of coastline, as I had been during the previous two sets of dangerous cliffs . . . and then at midnight the phone started ringing.

I immediately thought the worst—why else would the phone be ringing in the middle of the night if it wasn’t to deliver bad news? But I didn’t rush to answer it, and instead lay there trying to convince myself it was either a wrong number or a prank call.

Deep down, though, I had been dreading this moment since Stu first set off from Broome all those months ago. As thoughts and fears raced through my mind, the phone stopped ringing. Silence . . . but I was now fully awake, trying to stay calm and think logically despite the panic that was starting to grip me.

A knock at the front door came soon after and I immediately felt all my worst fears were about to be confirmed. With a sense of dread and a racing heart I leapt out of bed. I didn’t particularly want to open the door to bad news but I was desperate to stop our dog barking before he woke the girls. The last thing I wanted was to explain to them why there were two policemen here in the dead of the night.

‘Are you Sharon Trueman, wife of Stuart Trueman, the kayaker who is paddling the Bight?’ one of the policemen calmly asked.

This was a moment I had hoped would never happen. When Stuart set off, I was not so naive to think that nothing would ever go wrong but I had enough confidence in his ability to strongly believe that it wouldn’t happen to us. I was not prepared for this particular scenario and at that moment my heart was beating furiously and my legs were barely supporting me. With a very dry throat and hanging on to the dog for support, I managed a barely audible ‘Yes’.

It felt like an eternity before they explained the situation: if they were here to deliver bad news they seemed in no hurry to do so, prolonging my agony. Eventually they told me that an emergency flare had been reported in the general area of Stuart’s current position and the police wanted to know if I had any contact numbers for him other than his satellite phone, which was turned off.

My first thoughts were along the lines of, ‘No, I bloody well don’t have another number for him and even if I did, do you think there would be a) any reception and b) any way he would answer a mobile in the middle of a 36-hour crossing of a notoriously difficult southern cliff line in the middle of a winter night as he struggled to stay upright and alive?’

Of course I didn’t share these thoughts with the officers on my doorstep. Instead I invited them in and offered them the mobile number of Alaine, the kayaker in Perth who was manning the borrowed satellite phone Stu was using for this particular crossing. The arrangement had been that while he was on these cliffs, and the previous Baxter Cliffs, he would call in every 24 hours at 5 pm to report his location. The police called Alaine from my lounge room but, not surprisingly, she wasn’t able to give them any information either, so now there were two of us on different sides of the country wide awake and worried sick.

The next step was for me to call a senior constable in South Australia who was located near the border of South Australia and Western Australia. He was the officer first alerted to the flare sighting and the one who had called my local police station in search of more details. Still weak, dry-mouthed, shaking and cold—as I hadn’t grabbed a dressing gown in my haste—and still clinging to the dog for both warmth and support, I made the call.

The officer answered immediately but our conversation was very brief and yielded no good news. I told him that I couldn’t supply any further details on Stuart’s whereabouts except he had set off that morning from near Eucla and now, at 2 am, I estimated he had roughly covered two-thirds of the crossing and had been paddling for about eighteen hours. In return the only information I was able to get was that the flare was in the general vicinity of a little township called Yalata, or something like that, and we would have to wait until morning for further details . . . It was going to be a very long night.

The two local officers left shortly after this call and as I fumbled with the door locks I could do no more than collapse in a sobbing heap, my mind still in turmoil, unsure what to do next. The fact I could do nothing until the morning and had to face the next five or so hours imagining the worst was too much to bear.

I was able to compose myself enough to turn on my mobile phone, make myself a soothing cup of tea and get warm. The beep of a text message jolted me back to earth. I quickly scanned the screen for some positive news, but unfortunately it had been sent two hours earlier from the South Australia police, asking the same questions which I had now answered.

As I tried to digest everything that had evolved over the last few hours, my thoughts soon turned to how the police in South Australia knew of Stuart’s journey. Of course, I later learnt about the debacle with the manager of the Nullarbor Roadhouse and the chain of events that led to police officers visiting our home and me sitting tearfully on the couch pondering the future and what it might hold if the worst did eventuate.

Eventually, needing to speak to someone, I called Alaine, who I knew would still be awake and worrying. It was the best thing I could have done as she managed to calmly reassure me that, all things considered, the possibility of the emergency flare being from Stuart was very remote. We discussed all the facts and went over the scenario, and this made me feel more positive and relaxed enough to get an hour’s sleep just as dawn broke.

With a very tired but brave face I was on autopilot the next morning as I went through the chores and got the kids off to school, feeling pleased as they hopped on the bus that they had no inkling of the night I had endured. But as soon as the school bus turned the corner, and with a very strong cup of coffee in my hand, I was back on the phone to the officer in South Australia.

He was able to confirm that the flare had been spotted at a location about 170 kilometres east of where Stu was paddling and they now thought it had been set off from a remote Aboriginal reserve.

Twice in twelve hours I shed tears, but this time of sheer relief.

However, I still didn’t feel completely free of worry until Alaine called at five that afternoon, saying she had just heard from Stuart in person. He’d told her that he was extremely tired, the crossing had been hard and, to quote, ‘I’m not doing that shit again’. Alaine and I agreed that it would be some time before we told him of my ordeal.

Ahh, the highs and lows of an adventurer’s wife and what we endure . . . life is never boring!

We may not be physically slogging it out nonstop for 36 hours by sea kayak along 190 kilometres of cliffs, but the emotional obstacles can be just as challenging, especially when you have young children whom you have to be strong and capable for. I think this other side of life with an adventurer goes largely unrecognised, unfortunately, because it’s not a glamorous or death-defying story. But having my photo in a glossy magazine isn’t important to me—having my husband home in one piece is.