The Diary of a Bloke on a Mission | Dave Cornthwaite

Savouring every day...Carmen Major, 35, was diagnosed with Stills disease and told she might not walk or live beyond 18 years. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Last year Carmen had tests on her bones, and they showed up to be more typical of someone in their late 80’s. They’re brittle, much like the rest of her system, which lays her open to every disease and illness going. That she’s still alive is, according to the doctors who have treated her, a miracle.

A little while ago Carmen’s doctor told her she would do everything she could to keep her alive. ‘I think our idea of being alive is different,’ said Carmen, ‘you want to keep me breathing, I want to be out of this bed and travelling the world. That’s being alive.”

On Monday a drug arrives that Carmen has waited seven years for. She calls it her last chance, but it’s testimony to her inner strength that she’s not thinking about the end, she’s simply cooking up her next journey. ‘I need to go from pole to pole this summer,’ she told me, ‘there’s so much I haven’t seen yet.”

I’ve always harboured a little bit of vomit for repetition, using the same word twice in a sentence suggests a lack of vocabulary. But more than that, where’s the imagination? Strike the double-word-play, this isn’t just about writing, but life.

I’m struggling with this book. It’s not because it’s boring to write, or even because I’m just repeating a two and a half month cycle of sitting and working my arms - stage one in a kayak, stage two recalling what it was like to be in a kayak. I’m just…distracted. By everything. Email. Future trips. Food. Email. Money.

Out there on the river there was nothing to take me down a notch. There I was living the dream, feet caked in mud, forehead skittled with flattened mozzies, all the planning shaped to reality and no mood-shattering postal reminders from the Inland Revenue. Senses opened up to assault, please just drown me in this new world, revival of the unfittest, I can do anything. See? I can, I’m here. I’m doing it. I shall write a book. I shall make a film. I am living my new story and then it shall be told in many different forms, because it can be. Because I can make it so. Just try and stop me, I have paddled two thousand kilometres in moulded plastic and there, look! A fish has leapt clear of the water, so close a facewipe is now necessary. This is great.

And then I’m home. It’s done. Reality. What was once such an integral part of life - well, it was my life for a while, entirely - is now a memory, it seems almost folly to try and recall it. I’m a focus freak, I need a goal in everything I do otherwise where’s the importance? Give me a deadline and I’ll give you a smile. Make me write a book without a deadline, without a publisher, without an advance. Wow. Forget the two and a half thousand kilometres. That was a breeze, this is the test.

So in the absence of a deadline, how do you keep going? Personally, I tease myself. I go into a bookshop, where the aroma of new paper and souls of words give my heart some peace in this tumbling city. And I stare at a shelf where my book once was. Is no longer. Maybe they’ve moved it to Sport? General Interest? Comedy? They haven’t, it’s gone. Upside: someone bought it. Downside: they took so long to shift the thing a re-order was never on the cards.

I need another book. Something else to hold and say ‘look! I wrote another one!’ Something my Mum can hold and say ‘oh, chicken, this is wonderful.’ I know I can do it, even though this time I’m without a publisher (so far), and I’m slowly coming round to the truth that this is just another adventure, I just don’t know where it’s headed yet. I can’t say ‘I’m going to Lands End, or Brisbane, or the Sea!’ But I can just switch off the Internet and put myself in a quiet corner with no view and develop my own deadlines, aim for that 110,000 words and break it down, like you would on a journey. Small, edible pieces. They make up a hearty meal. Another 2,000 by lunchtime, here we go.

Had I set myself some resolutions during our most recent turning-of-the-years, I probably would have encouraged myself to blog more. Luckily, for the past couple of years I’ve adopted a policy of setting myself Daily Resolutions, annual ones were just there to break and feel guilty about.

Strangely - and notably ignoring the word ‘resolution’ - I have set some personal targets this year, and one of them is to get on with the writing. With one book nearly finished and hanging around like stale perfume (it’s about dating, a lot of dating) and another in the pipeline (it’s about an irrigation channel called the Murray River), 2010 promises a great deal on the book front.

Of course, for those of you who followed Year 1 of The Great Big Paddle, you’ll know that I have  some more water journeys around the corner, with a Stand Up Paddle Board firmly in the thick of things. Whether I’ll embark on an enormous expedition this year is still up in the air, but the promise of travelling several thousand miles on a SUP board delivers excited chills into my holiday-weary shoulders - ’tis the electricity of certainty, a familiar energy recognised by those who endeavour to go far.

And it is those who enjoy lofty targets who have influenced my most recent project, DreamChase. Last year I was fortunate enough to engage with a few people who have achieved monumental things in their short lives. Both Sarah Outen and Dan Martin instantly jump to mind, and not because we all went to the very same Stamford School in Lincolnshire (what they fed us there is yet to be understood).

Last year Sarah spent 124 days at sea, becoming the first woman to row solo across the Indian Ocean and the youngest person to accomplish that particular feat. She also happens to be the youngest woman to ever cross an ocean solo, so the scent of a new Outen journey looms thick in the air - I cannot wait to hear what she’s getting up to over the next couple of years. Dan Martin, meanwhile, has left us in no doubt as to what he’s about to attempt. Until now Dan has ventured afar on his bike, pedalling over 55,000km in two journeys, from London to Cape Town, and then along the Axis of Evil, from South Korea to Cape Town.  It sounds almost futile to even talk about the subsequent cycle across Europe and Asia and then a run across North America when the first leg of Dan’s upcoming  Global Triathalon is a 5700km swim across the Atlantic Ocean, from New York to Brest, in France.

Over the past few years I’ve given hundreds of talks about my own adventures and the concept of exploration and chasing dreams, realising along the way that the importance of introducing belief and self-confidence to our younger generations is imperative at a time when hope is a dwindling entity. DreamChase is a multi-faceted idea, but at its foundation is a desire to create a network of inspirational people, and spread that combination of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm as wide as possible. We’ll be working with all kinds of people who have a common link: they’re all achievers, live with positivity and aren’t afraid to buck the general trend to achieve their dreams. We’ll be marketing projects, organising expeditions and developing the public profiles of adventurers and explorers, musicians, talented filmmakers and editors and other interesting characters, and DreamChase will also support charitable fundraising efforts - usually journeys but sometimes unique and interesting projects. It’s going to be an exciting year for everyone involved, so please take a look at www.dreamchase.co.uk, and if you’re on Facebook, please join our group, too.

Finally, in alliance with DreamChase, if one of your new year’s resolutions was to raise money for charity, then maybe you’d like to do something for the AV Foundation? I support AV’s work with my Great Big Paddle project and it’s also DreamChase’s charity of choice - if you decide to fundraise for the AV Foundation we’ll help you publicise your event and will even design you a website to make sure it’s as successful as possible, completely free of charge. What are you waiting for?!

I’m not ashamed to have a slightly talented partner. Her music career is going places in 2010, and here’s her latest music video, a little smile-fest filmed on a Western Australian salt lake. The song is Rose Tinted Spectacles, and more of Emi’s music can be heard on http://www.myspace.com/emigreenmusic

I must admit, spending the first day of 2010 sitting by the Murray River hadn’t been on the agenda, but sure enough there I was with Em and her family, only this time it was in Western Australia. Yes, it appears that there’s another Murray over here, and this one is only 134km long. Hmmmm…

A fortnight of rest hasn’t yet driven the stiffness from my fingers, although the old body is now recovering from the natural post-ultra marathon meltdown, and with the turn of another year it becomes natural to look ahead and set new challenges. I’m in WA until the end of January and hope to get my mits on a Stand Up Paddle board to take advantage of the Indian Ocean that beats the shoreline just a couple of hundred metres away. That new Murray, though, has me thinking. Surely another little Murray challenge wouldn’t hurt, would it? Watch this space.

With the Yarrawonga Mulwala Canoe Club

Meanwhile, results are coming in from the official Murray Marathon, an annual late-December 404km race between Yarrawonga and Swan Hill back on the big river.  Training was gearing up when I paddled through the region in October and November, and  wonderfully there have been some gold-medal antics from the Yarrawonga-Mulwala Canoe Club. Tim Roadley and Jared Loughnan (who joined me to Yarrawonga Weir) sat in the fastest TK2 to complete the Marathon, and Tim’s daughter Brea (who struggled to stay in her boat when she joined The Great Big Paddle in Bundalong!), fresh with magnetic Clic sunglasses, won the Junior Marathon in a record time.  Superb effort guys, and Tim tells me they have a small about of fundraising left over to donate to the AV Foundation, following their generous donation in November.

Brea Roadley, Junior Marathon Champion!

I’m lucky enough to be partnered up with the most talented person I’ve ever met, a Miss Emily Green. Counting songwriting as one of her many powers she has a way with words that creates an envy within me to match her surname. A Christmas newsletter to those who follow her musical carousel summed up my recent expedition far better than I could myself, so I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s not easy being away from the person you love for nigh on three months, Em’s support always gives me a solid base for these shindigs, and her music spent quite a bit of time in my logholes, too. Rough rivers are much easier to deal with with fine music at hand! Please visit Em’s site and listen to her latest tracks at www.myspace.com/emilyjoygreen, and do enjoy her Christmas message. I daresay you might switch on MTV next year and see her face, so start listening before the masses!

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My partner, Dave Cornthwaite, has the best answer to that dreaded question strangers throw you at parties and awkward family functions. “So tell me…what is it you do?” His reply? “I’m an adventurer.”

safely www.justgiving.com/greatbigpaddle

At 14:30 on Saturday 19th December I paddled my kayak, Nala, into South Australia’s Coorong National Park and through the Murray Mouth to conclude a two and a half month, 2476km journey along Australia’s greatest river, the Murray.

Pulling Nala to the shore at the Murray Mouth. Job done.

The moment was crowned just 150 metres from the river mouth, when an enormous seal popped up to say hello to my kayak Nala and I. I’m very glad to say that my camera was rolling and the resulting footage of the cheeky fella’s acrobatics can be seen on my You Tube Channel, through http://www.thegreatbigpaddle.com

Hundreds of inspiring, passionate people lined the river and as the Murray itself well knows, man has a strong hand in any journey. I’m lucky enough to have made friends for life on this trek, and their shared knowledge has begun to give me an understanding of the Murray’s plight from source to sea. Thank you so much to everyone I’ve met since early October, even the fisherman near Tooleybuc who was very sure that I’d be better off getting to Adelaide by aeroplane.

It has been an eye-opening, educational journey. From heavy snow in the mountains to blistering November heatwaves, Australia rolled all of its climates up in a cloud and blew it along the Murray, often straight into my face! I have existed within a 2500km zoo, camping in forests and on sandbars, paddling with platypus, snakes, lizards, emu, roos, eagles and parrots. Oh, and seals. I have looked to the sky many a time, expecting to see a chap winking down. I have been looked after, and the same treatment needs to be applied to the river. I’m no politician or activist so I’ll keep this short, but the Murray existed before borders sliced up this wonderful land, and so long as those borders prevent the river from being managed consistently and fairly a tragic environmental catastrophe will slowly become reality. The signs of decline are there for all to see; please Australia, for goodness sake, take notice, and then take action. You have a gem here, look after it.

Our fundraising total for the AV Foundation’s solar and water projects was buoyed this weekend when my kayak Nala, offered for auction by Wilderness Systems, was purchased by the Dodds Family from Canberra for a princely sum of $3000/£1650. If you have even a couple of silver coins free a donation would be hugely appreciated through http://www.justgiving.com/greatbigpaddle

The Dodds paid $3000 for my kayak Nala, which was kindly donated to the expedition by Wilderness Systems. All proceeds go to the AV Foundation

For now, let me wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’m off to write a book and edit a film about a dying river that contains and sustains so much life. As 2009 draws to a close I hope that you guys feel as alive as I do, this was quite a 30th birthday present.

Thanks for following the expedition, it would have been quite lonely without you. Watch this space for the next one, it won’t be long…

Mannum, South Australia. 80km from Adelaide, home of the Murray Princess paddlesteamer and possibly the State’s most romantic accomodation, the Riverview Rise Retreats. If you’ve followed this journey along the Murray River you’ll be quite aware that my shelter to date has largely involved canvas, several million insects and a distinct lack of phone coverage. Tonight, though, is different. Three days ago my lady arrived, bringing to an end out two and a half months apart. Poor girl, Australian in heart and soul, she’s been stuck in an ever-darkening London winter while her bloke has been traversing her home country as it simmers towards summer. Thankfully the inbalance has been addressed, and a kind offer has given us a chance to escape and catch up. It’s truly magical up here, we’re even wearing kimonos, but don’t think I’ve forgotten about the expedition. Down below, the Murray glistens in the evening haze, and somewhere on its western bank nestled in there among the gums and Mannum roofs, is a sign that reads, quite simply, 150.

After 63 days and 2332km travelled, I’m now 4 and 150 away from the Murray’s Mouth. It’s not over yet, the expedition’s largest challenge still remains in the form of Lake Alexandrina. As with most of South Australia’s water bodies, it’s a shallow lake, but with unpredictable coastal climates this enables high waves to kick up with minimal notice. You don’t want to be caught out there in a decent sized paddlesteamer, let alone a kayak.

For now, I’ll let the weather look after itself and get back to my girl. After all, it’s her support that enabled me to focus in on making this expedition the success it so nearly is.

Please visit http://www.thegreatbigpaddle.com to follow the journey through to its conclusion.

Dear Friends of the Great Big Paddle Murray River Expedition 2009,

With over two months on the Murray River and 2150km paddled to date, the remaining 314km to paddle feels dangerously like the final stretch of what has been an incredible journey.

Of course, it’s not over yet. I write from Morgan in the South Australian Riverlands, a corner of Oz crawling with vines and orchards. Slowly, I’m beginning to form a clear picture of how the Murray River’s water is being used along its own journey from the Australian Alps to the sea near Goolwa, but my pre-expedition goal of investigating the problems faced by the Murray has been bouyed somewhat by a realisation that the river, however troubled in places, continues to be a highlight of what is already a vast country offering utterly unique geographical delights. The Murray isn’t just one of the most beautiful rivers in the country, but in the world. Bizarrely, it doesn’t warrant official iconic status in Australia; whether this is because recognition as a landmark would shed more light on the issues at hand I don’t know, but having travelled much of Aussie’s greatest river to date I know that it isn’t dying, it’s sick. I’ve talked to more people in the past two months than the rest of my life put together, but talking doesn’t achieve much, it’s putting those words into practice and binding the experiences and viewpoints of everyone who lives beside and works with the river. They’re the people who know what’s going on, and ultimately they must be the ones who breathe new life into the Murray.

I’ll cover the issues themselves in a later newsletter, but even as the Murray has lost its flow in a lower section of river dotted with weirs that pool water for irrigation, I have paddled along in a River Red Gum-lined paradise, watched Emus swimming, goannas hunting, darters feeding their young in nests just a couple of feet off the surface. Snakes with frog suppers, pelicans by the thousand, river beaches that belong in paradise, this river has it all. At some point down the line, unless an effective line of communication starts up between the three States through which the Murray runs, all of this will one day be lost. It won’t be tomorrow, but what it is happening today will be the cause.

I’d quite like to bring my Grandkids down here and be able to show them the Murray with pride. Sure, I need to have some kids first, but this is a river that mustn’t be lost to future generations.

We’ve raised almost £2000 to date for the AV Foundation so far, uploaded photos and videos from every section of the Murray between the Source and Renmark, and over twenty video diaries have been edited along the way, whether on sandbars, riverbanks or houseboats. Please forward this email to anyone you know who has a passion for the Murray, or adventure! The website is at www.thegreatbigpaddle.com

Thanks for your support, I’ll report again from the mouth of the mighty Murray.

Dave Cornthwaite

Notes of Interest
1.      The Expedition ends on the 19th December at the Murray Mouth near Goolwa. That day people are invited to join Dave on the water from Clayton, let’s paddle together to recognise this great river. We then have a celebration and get together at the Corio Hotel, Railway Terrace, Goolwa, SA 5214. 4pm onwards. Please come along if you can, it’s an open invitation.