DAVID ADAMS reports…
Padding 330 kilometres in an island hopping journey across Bass Strait on an ocean racing ski sounds an almost impossibly daunting task. But Ballarat GP Mike Pickavance says he’s looking forward to the spectacular scenery and wildlife he’ll be seeing. Not to mention the challenge itself.
“There’s also something good about pushing yourself beyond what you think you’d normally be able to do, says the 50-year-old father of three. “I find that my character changes every time you push through something difficult. It develops something in you. And it helps just with daily living having done things like this…It helps you put things in perspective a little.”
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A LONG PADDLE AHEAD: Dr Mike Pickavance is raising money for Christian child sponsorship organisation Compassion Australia while paddling on an ocean racing ski across Bass Strait. “Normally you sponsor children on a monthly basis but not everybody can do that. But it’s very easy for people to just give a small amount of money and I figured that if enough people gave a small amount of money, it would add up to a substantial amount…The more money we can get through to something like Compassion, the better. It’s such an enormously worthwhile organisation, it really is.”– Dr Mike Pickavance |
The group of five – which includes Dr Pickavance, the expedition’s leader Jarad Kohlar, and three others – intend setting out from Port Welshpool in Victoria on 28th February. Their route will take them via Wilson’s Promontory, Deal Island and Flinders Island (they will spend two days going around this) before heading across Bass Strait to Little Musselroe Bay in north-east Tasmania.
The group, which will be travelling with a support boat, have allowed a three week window in which to complete the trip.
“It’s seven days paddling but if there’s a swell more than two metres, we won’t be paddling,” says Dr Pickavance. “And so any time over that will be because of weather. If the weather is not favorable then we’ll stay on an island until the weather is favorable…”
Dr Pickavance, who met Mr Kohlar through the sport of adventure racing (this involves competing in contests involving numerous different sports including running, trekking, mountain bike riding, swimming and kayaking which are often held over several days or nights), decided to go on the trip after missing a similar trip – the world’s first crossing of Bass Strait on ocean racing skis – last year after his wife Mary “wasn’t so keen” on him going.
“So when the opportunity came up again this year, I just booked it and then told her,” he says.
As well as the satisfaction of crossing the Bass Strait on ocean racing skis – a feat which Mr Kohlar has described as the “paddling equivalent of Mount Everest” – the group are also stopping to spend some time cleaning up the islands as they pass by.
In addition, Dr Pickavance, who attends the York Street Church of Christ in Ballarat, is taking the opportunity to raise some money for Christian child sponsorship organisation Compassion Australia. His family already sponsor 24 children and Dr Pickavance says he thought the trip was a good opportunity for people who might want to make a one-off contribution to the organisation’s work to do so.
“Normally you sponsor children on a monthly basis but not everybody can do that,” he says. “But it’s very easy for people to just give a small amount of money and I figured that if enough people gave a small amount of money, it would add up to a substantial amount…The more money we can get through to something like Compassion, the better. It’s such an enormously worthwhile organisation, it really is.”
Dr Pickavance, originally from Staffordshire in England, has been using an ocean racing ski for about five years but says that much of his training, which peaked at about two-and-a-half hours a day but has now been reduced in preparation for the crossing, has been multi-sport in nature involving running, mountain-biking, kayaking and swimming.
“A lot of it is just endurance…” says Dr Pickavance who in 2007 completed the 800 kilometre XPD adventure race in northern Queensland. “When you’re doing long trips like that it’s not necessarily just about being able to paddle the craft, it’s a lot more about your mental attitude and you need an all-round fitness.”
Dr Pickavance is under no illusions about the dangers involved in crossing the Bass Strait, acknowledged as one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of water – “you can be going along and the swells running at a couple of metres and then you get a five metre wave that comes through,” he reflects. Nor about the pain involved in undertaking such a physically demanding journey.
“But I don’t think about that, you just cope with it…” he says. “Things ache and get sore but we get to see things that most people never see and experience some absolutely stunning parts of the world that people…just don’t know are there…We’re going to spend some time on some of the most beautiful remote islands there are around.”
• Donations can be made to Compassion Australia via Mike Pickavance’s Everyday Hero fundraising page (www.everydayhero.com.au/mike_pickavance).
