Dave Cornthwaite | The Creative Explorer

Little did I know it when I jumped on a longboard for the first time in 2005 that my life was about to change quite dramatically. I was a shabby graphic designer with no ambition, no aspirations, no direction and no idea what was about to happen.

We all have a little pilot light burning inside us, waiting for ignition, all it takes is for someone or something to push the button. After that, the fire is ours, it’s up to us to keep it burning.

After my first adventures my flame flickered for a couple of years. It burned strongly when I wrote my first book, BoardFree, and then dimmed for a while before I decided to try and date 100 women in 100 days to try and find a girlfriend. And then the flickering commenced throughout 2008 as I tried to understand myself and where I was going. I needed another expedition to get me back on track, so I bought a narrowboat and lived on a canal in Wiltshire for the best part of a year, before walking and kayaking the length of Australia’s Murray River, an expedition which well and truly got me back on track.

Since then, I’ve felt pretty warm inside, I know who I am, I know where I’m going. I finally understand why a little voice used to tell me I had potential, back when I was a teenager no-hoper with love for very little other than a football!

I now make a meagre living without having a job. I have a long-term focus that glues together an existence based purely on belief and hard work. I’ve struggled for a few years, earning barely anything, building my wealth in experience, not money. Things started to gel only when I began to think beyond the simplicity of ‘what’ I was doing, it was when I considered ‘why’ that I started to understand.

I trusted how I felt, decided to combine my loves of sport and travel and the inner workings of the human mind and now, where once my friends and family would question my motives and my bank balance and my future, now they accept it, because suddenly I seem to be doing okay on all fronts and that makes it socially acceptable!

I think the world would be a better place if everyone was content with themselves. Happiness filters down, it’s delightfully infectious, and I’ve been privileged enough to spend the last three weeks touring around Australia with my friend Sebastian Terry discussing the nature of our life choices. We’ve presented to audiences in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, and although there is so much more to come it truly feels as though the hard work of the last six years has finally come to fruition.

I sit here in my hotel room, looking out over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In two days I fly back to the UK, and two weeks after that I head to Minneapolis in the United States, from where I will drive out to Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and begin a three-month journey along the Mississippi River by Stand Up Paddleboard. Had you asked me six years ago what I’d be doing in 2011 I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, but if you’d informed me that I’d be doing this, I can unequivocally say that I would have been very happy indeed.

Onwards, it’s time for a brand new chapter.

Official Website: www.davecornthwaite.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/DaveCorn
Facebook: www.facebook.com/expedition1000

With a 2400 mile journey along the Mississippi the only date in my diary this summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about my last big river journey, a source to sea walk and kayak along Australia’s Murray River. Here’s a little insight into what I got up to in late 2009:

The Murray is as much an irrigation channel as a river, and dead River Gums are a telltale sign that a dam is just downstream. The trees were killed in the post-dam floods in the 1930’s.

This was my first journey on water, and it took a while to work out exactly how to get all of my stuff into the kayak!

Dusk was my favourite time, everything peaceful, kangaroos sipping from the lake, and the calm surface providing perfect conditions for the famous ‘Murray Mirror’

Of course, waking up on my own private beach every morning for two and a half months was quite pleasant…

There were surprises every day, who knew that emus could swim? (At first glance, I thought an obscenely large snake was lying in wait…)

Apparently, despite a heavy population of poisonous snakes in the Murray basin, even little birds don’t seem to mind them (I must say, though, that the skull made me think twice about getting closer to this Red Bellied Black snake)

As usual, by far the biggest danger on this journey was man. Drunken boat drivers terrorised the river one long weekend, one wakeboarder even tried to nick the camera off my kayak deck at 60kmph!

But it’s hard to hold anything against Australians. They have a brilliant way with words…

And they’ll do anything to make sure a pub is nearby…

The perfect birthday!

This was my Australian Christmas.

I paddled the Murray before the 2010 floods, when the river had been in drought for nine years.

The red cliffs of South Australia provided this backdrop for days.

And, naturally, it was far too hot in the middle of the day to paddle…

The journey was wrapped up on a lovely note. After 2479km of walking and kayaking, I was barely 100 metres from the mouth of the river when this chap came to say well done.

Find out more about my adventures at www.davecornthwaite.com

On Saturday 3rd July the old paddleboarding double-act links up again, when Sarah Outen and I deliver a joint lecture at this year’s Blue Mile: Race For The Environment. Come along folks, you’ll dig it.

Hi there,

If you’re in the UK I hope you’re lapping up this gorgeous weather. And if you’re in Australia…well, you get it all the time and I’m quite jealous. Either way, I’m a bit red.

I thought I’d drop you a line with progress of the Great Big Paddle, 2010 is proving to be quite fruitful.

1) I’m working hard on a documentary about the Murray River Expedition, and expect it to be complete in time for some film festivals later this year. As always, I shall keep you posted.

2) I’m quite excited about the completion of another documentary, a 4-part 25 minute short about the Lake Geneva Crossing, a mini-expedition I paddled alongside an inspirational friend of mine, Sebastian Terry (who is also in the middle of his own project, called 100 Things - check out http://www.100things.com.au). Although a version of the documentary will find its way onto a DVD later this year, we’ve decided to make it free for all and put it online. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so without further ado here’s the link to all four episodes http://www.greatbigpaddle.kk5.org/#/geneva-crossing-documentary/4541155352

3) Finally, another mini-adventure is almost upon us! Between June 2nd and 8th I’ll be joined by a rather salty lady named Sarah Outen (who only went and rowed solo across the Indian Ocean last year) in a 150 mile Stand Up Paddle across the UK from Bath to London. We’re doing this for two charities, the AV Foundation and CoppaFeel, and also to promote the beauty of the UK and the fact that the spirit of adventure can exisit within these fine borders. We’re making a big deal of inviting people to join us on the way and raising a bit for our charities, too, so if you’ve been telling yourself to have an adventure and do some good things for charity, then maybe this is the chance! Take a look at our schedule on www.thegreatbigpaddle.com and if you can join us, please do. The weather’s looking tasty

Thanks as always for your support, if you’re planning your own adventure soon please let me know and I’ll help where I can. Last week I heard a quite inspirational blind man speak and he said something that seemed quite appropriate: The last time you did something new was the last time you grew as a person.

And with that in mind, cheerio!

In thanks for a foreword I’ve just written for his new book on the Murray River, Shane Strudwick of the wonderful MurrayRiver.com has compiled a montage of images of last year’s Murray River Expedition. Good times!

Always a privilege to be published by a magazine in the ‘Geographic’ family. This month I’ve got a four page spread talking about the kit used on last year’s Murray River Expedition. Pop along to a reputable newsagent and grab a copy if you’re thinking of paddling along a river.

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!

*    *   *

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.