Paddler retraces epic sea adventure

Former Geraldton woman Sandy Robson completed a 23,000km journey from Germany to Australia in a kayak earlier this month.

The five-year voyage followed the route set down by German kayaking legend Oskar Speck who made the trip in the 1930s.

Robson was inspired to go on the trip when she overheard her friends discussing Speck at a party, and went to see the collection of Speck’s journals and letters at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

Plotting out a route as similar to Speck’s as possible, Robson found that some things had changed since then.

“In Bangladesh for example they didn’t even have a word for a kayak and the fact that a woman was trying to do this alone in a Muslim country meant that it took three months to get that permission — we had to send a man into the office to get them to explain what this woman was doing,” she said.

In addition, Robson also had to skip large parts of the voyage along the coast of the Middle East because the conflicts made it too dangerous for her to travel.

Robson said that by comparison, although she had the advantage of GPS and internet services, certain things were easier for a traveller in Speck’s time, who could rely on the power of the larger colonial governments to ensure access permission.

These governments didn’t always work in Speck’s favour though, and he was arrested as an illegal alien upon his arrival in Australia in 1939, because war had broken out with Germany.

By comparison Robson was welcomed by significantly less hostile border authorities and the loving arms of her father. Robson said one of the most special experiences she had on the voyage was sharing the end of this story with an 86-year-old Papua New Guinean man, who was just eight years old when Speck first visited the village.

“He told me all about it, his son translated for him, and he said, ‘Oh we never found out what happened to that fellow because he came here and the war started’,” she said.

“So 80 years later I was tellinghim the end of this story he had kept in oral tradition for decades.”

Robson noted that while there was a lot more plastic in the water, and mobile phones had become a way of life for everyone, most other elements of life for the people she met throughout Papua New Guinea had changed little.

With this journey over Robson said she would look out for her next adventure – and wouldn’t be giving up her passion for paddling.

In the meantime she said she would write a book incorporating Speck’s notes on his voyage and comparing them to her own.