WHEN outdoor enthusiast Sandy Robson had a hip replaced in 2004, her surgeon warned her against long, arduous bush walks, but said she could paddle her kayak as far as she wanted.“I don’t think he really knew I would take it so literally,” laughs the 43-year-old Australian adventurer, who recently completed a 4000km journey paddling from Germany to Cyprus.“I’ve been such a long way on that new hip.”But the five-month trip along the picturesque rivers and coastlines of Europe is just the beginning: Sandy plans to resume her marathon sea kayak expedition next year and ultimately paddle all the way back to Australia.Her goal is to retrace the route taken by Oskar Speck, a young man who set off from his Depression-hit homeland of Germany in a double kayak in 1932 and arrived at Thursday Island, near Cape York, seven years later.Captivated by details of his epic 50,000km voyage, the former Bendigo resident decided to experience first-hand what she calls “one of the most amazing kayak journeys of all time”.On May 14 this year – the 79th anniversary of the day Speck departed from the German city of Ulm – Sandy launched her one-man Lettman Magellan kayak into the Danube River there and headed off on stage one of her personal pilgrimage. Sandy loads her kayak onto a ferry to cross the border from Rodos, Greece, to Turkey. Picture: MIHALISWhat on earth, you may ask, would possess her to undertake such a venture?“I don’t know – I just like exploring new places,” Sandy says, before revealing her philosophy of following your dreams, seizing the moment and having no regrets.“With kayaking, you’d often travel along a coast and at the end, you’d look out and really like to keep going. But you’d always have to go back to work or whatever else you were doing.“A lot of people work until they are in their 60s or 70s then retire, but by that stage they can’t do all the things they want to. You have to do them now, or you might not do them at all.“So I am taking some of my retirement time now, even if it means I might have to work for a little bit longer later on...”Sandy also mentions a former teaching colleague who died suddenly on a school camp several years ago, aged in his early 50s.“That made quite a few of us look at our lives and say, ‘this is what I want to do so I’ll just do it’,” she says. “It made people really look at their goals – it’s all about living your dreams and giving things a go.”Though she is based in Perth, Sandy has fond memories of Bendigo, where she lived in 1994 while completing a graduate diploma in outdoor education at La Trobe University. It was during her time here that she first learnt to kayak as part of her studies.“It was one of the best years of my life,” she says, recalling regular trips throughout the region for bushwalking, rock climbing, skiing and paddling activities.“The course in Bendigo is the best outdoor education course in Australia and when you get a student who has come out of La Trobe in Bendigo, you know you are getting someone with a good quality education.”Her links with the region came full circle in 2009, when she was hired by La Trobe to lead a 16-day sea kayaking expedition for its Bendigo students through the Whitsundays.That followed a year-long trip in 2007 to see just how far she could get paddling anti-clockwise around the Australian coast. Sandy left from Queenscliff in Victoria and made it more than 6000km despite being attacked by a crocodile up on Cape York.But the Speck trip, which she estimates will take her five years to complete, takes sea kayaking to a whole new level.During the first stage, Sandy paddled down the Danube to the Bulgarian border, then travelled overland to Macedonia where she followed the Vardar River to the sea in Greece before crossing the Aegean Sea to Turkey and hugging the Mediterranean coast to Cyprus. This saw her visit countries including Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia. Sandy cuts a lonely figure paddling off the coast of Antalya, Turkey. Picture: SEYFI YILMAZ A group of three paddled along Oskar Speck’s route in 1953. But Sandy struggled to find anyone along her way who remembered the pioneer or had even heard of his feats.What she did find, however, were friendly locals galore who couldn’t do enough to help the foreigner paddling her kayak through their towns and villages, and a European media fascinated by her exploits.“They definitely think I am crazy,” Sandy says of those she befriended en route, many of whom provided her with food, cool drinks, accommodation, protection, logistics, language translation and even the occasional offer of a romantic date! “A lot of people can’t believe I am actually doing it. Sometimes they think I am making it all up, but eventually they realise it is true.”She says sea kayaking is popular in Germany and Austria, so there was an established network of people involved in the sport on hand to lend a helping hand when required. Elsewhere, Sandy was very much a novelty.“The Greeks were a bit confused by what I was doing, but they were very generous. They can’t believe that a kayak can cross between the islands or that a girl can do this trip.”At some stages during her trip, Sandy was joined on the water by local paddlers; at other times, she was alone. In Serbia, a small dog climbed aboard the kayak and kept her company for her last day on the Danube.Being a solo female paddler didn’t pose any problems for Sandy – apart from one evening she was camped in Serbia when some local drunks yelling outside her tent caused some concern. “You have to be careful, but I have had more problems paddling around Australia than overseas”, she says, recounting the night she had to scare off some Aussie troublemakers who she awoke to find trying to steal her kayak.“In Serbia and Greece particularly, the men are very protective of women so I found they looked after me and kept an eye on me.”It will be a very different story when Sandy embarks on stage two of Oskar Speck’s odyssey some time in 2012. It involves travelling through several volatile war-torn countries and she is looking for an expedition partner to share the experience with.Speck crossed from Cyprus to Syria, caught a bus to the Euphrates River and followed it to Iraq, ending up in the Persian Gulf, then on to Pakistan and India. Sandy is not sure if she will be allowed to enter all the nations on her schedule, or whether the political situation in some regions will make it too dangerous. But she is considering route variations and options such as cycling a short sector if the need arises.Sandy says she is fortunate to be surrounded by an understanding group of family and friends who don’t view what she does as anything out of the ordinary.“I think my friends are very similar to me and a lot of them are out there doing crazy things too, rather than living more conventional lives,” she says.“Doing outdoor education affects your philosophy on life and what you value.“Dad encourages me to go and do adventurous stuff. When I said I thought I might do part of the Speck trip and paddle from Germany to Cyprus, he said ‘why don’t you just do the whole thing?’“My mum isn’t a camper or an outdoor person though, so she worries. But she supports me – she collects all my mail when I am away, does my banking and all those everyday things.”While not lacking in emotional support, Sandy is struggling to fund the rest of her journey and is seeking financial help to supplement her income as a freelance outdoor instructor.She jokes that she is not scared of pirates while paddling out in the open ocean, but she is afraid of not having any sponsors.“At the end of the day, I want to do this trip so I am sure I will find some way to fund it, but it is a big challenge. “That’s my job for the next three months – writing letters asking for sponsorship. It is disheartening sometimes. But I just have to find the right company to help out.”Sandy hopes to one day write a book, join the speakers’ circuit and would love a job with a kayak company that runs trips all over the world so she can make enough money from her activities to pay for the next adventure. At the end of the day, she wants to be able to look back on a life that is rich in experiences. “I always tell people I will never win the lotto because I have already won it many times over with all the friendships I have made, the things I have done and the way that things have worked out for me,” she says.“I want to know that I have lived my life with intent, not just got up and gone to work every day because that’s what everyone else is doing. “I don’t know where I will end up, but I do know you get lots of opportunities by following your dreams.”To find out more about Sandy Robson’s adventures, read her blog, or to help sponsor her journey along the Oskar Speck route, visit www.sandy-robson.com

German’s inspiring journey

ARTEFACTS from Oskar Speck’s incredible 50,000km kayak journey are on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.Items in the Speck collection include his passport, compass, diary and photos and film footage of villagers he encountered during his seven-year odyssey from Germany to Australia.In 1932, with his homeland in the depths of the Great Depression, the unemployed electrical contractor jumped into his 5.5-metre-long collapsible kayak and paddled down the Danube River to Cyprus in search of work in the copper mines.When he reached his destination, he decided to keep going and see the world. He visited countries including Syria, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, documenting his travels as he went.It was not all smooth sailing. He was attacked, tied up and robbed by local tribesman in Indonesia, eventually managing to free himself and escape in his kayak.By the time he entered our waters in 1939, Australia was at war with Germany and he was arrested on Thursday Island as an enemy alien.According to the maritime museum, Speck’s unexpected arrival with a camera during wartime led to suspicions he was a German agent and he was interrogated by police before being sent to an internment camp.When he was released at the end of the war in 1945, Speck went to Lightning Ridge, became an opal cutter and later moved to Sydney.He never returned to Germany and died in 1995. More details about Oskar Speck’s life and travels are available at www.anmm.gov.au