Traveling Home

For the first time ever on expedition, I carried a personal locator beacon – something I hadn’t done walking alone across the mountains of Iran or paddling the length of the Amazon. The device was programmed to check-in all OK, to summon emergency rescue, or an acceptable middle option for me: call Mum. Failing outright or being overcome by the river was painful, but having to trouble emergency services due to my folly didn’t sit right either.

So, as night slowly lifted, I pushed a button on my device. ‘Need pick-up, non-life threatening,’ the pre-determined email pinged off to my family, exact location attached.

Another night by the river could be fatal. Surely, to die out there would be far more embarrassing and shameful than being rescued by Mum?

Searching my maps, I could see that the river – after endless kilometres, twists and turns – ran within a couple of hundred metres of a dirt track, which would go on to meet a road. If I could reach there, perhaps I could flag down a passing truck.

Laboriously, I broke camp and loaded my SUP board under the punishing mid-day sun. Too weak to stand, I sat and paddled off downstream, questioning my actions. Leaving the place where I had activated the beacon could prove to be a mistake. However, I knew it would be easy to activate it again later.

My progress after a couple of hours was painful; even seated, several times I almost toppled off the board into the water. Reaching the road that day began to seem ever more unlikely. Another night in the bush loomed.

At 4.00pm, still far from hope, still deep below the high river sides, the faintest of sounds drifted down to me: a motorbike. I didn’t know or care if they were looking for me. As fast as could be managed, I scrambled up the steep bank and called out, yelled and yelled, but nothing. The noise faded and then silence. Some expletives later I was back on the river, paddling and poling.

Half an hour later it was back. Almost immediately I spotted a motorbike, a man sitting astride it, some way back upriver. I waved my paddle overhead and he called out: ‘Around the corner. Water pump. River right. Stop there.’ I signalled my understanding and set off. Sure enough, a bright yellow pump sat on the river’s edge with a water pipe snaking up and away into the bush. Sitting beneath a tree above the river, feeling exhausted beyond words, I marked my position on my GPS and sent another beacon transmission. All I could do then was wait.

Time passed. My watch said 45 minutes. I opened my eyes at the sound of a vehicle and saw a 4WD bouncing along a dusty track at speed towards me. It came to a halting stop and Farmer Scott jumped out, accompanied by his young daughter, big smile on his face. He had been looking for me.

After shaking hands, my first question: ‘Don’t tell me, the coppers are on their way, are they?’ He laughed; yep they were. Sure enough, within 10 minutes a police vehicle and the local volunteer emergency services crew drove up.

More smiles and laughter. I had a feeling that my family had alerted them to my whereabouts, and I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that I’d involved them. One of the police officers just laughed. He told me he was just happy to find me alive. Two weeks before, they had searched for a woman who had left a vehicle and walked into the bush. They found her three days later, dead.