The 1000 Hour Day

by Chris Bray

  The biggest thing I’d been looking forward to was simply having time on my hands—time to relax, to do nothing, and to catch up with friends. However, as it turned out, diving back into the social scene wasn’t as seamless as I’d hoped. At parties and social catch-ups, I found it hard to hold a conversation with my old friends, and they with me.

  ‘So, um … how was the Arctic?’

  I didn’t even know how to begin to answer such a question. ‘Yeah, it was … amazing!’ I’d try to sustain the conversation over a few more obvious questions—‘Was it … cold?’—and then, unable to convey the magnitude of the experience, I’d falter and the topic would awkwardly shift. Clark and I had experienced so much out there—learned so many things about life and the things that really matter, we’d had so much time to reflect and ponder life goals that trying now to blend in with conversations about who should be evicted from the next reality TV episode, or what the latest computer playstation game was like, just left me feeling false, disconnected and alienated.

  Like an aquarium fish briefly released into the ocean, I now felt increasingly as though I’d been plopped back into the tank, where my revelations of freedom only briefly struck a distant chord with a handful of my fellow fish. We had gone out looking for ‘adventure’, but in the process we’d discovered a whole lot more, as if suddenly life’s potential and purpose had fallen into place. And so, to my dismay, part of me now no longer felt satisfied or at home. With my nose pressed up against the metaphorical sides of the fish tank, I fretted over why it was that no one else seemed to even notice the glass.

  The changes we went through were not only psychological. Some people saw it in our faces. ‘Man, your eyes look different, older or … something.’ Others pinned it down to us both having ‘squarer jaws’, and looking at photos taken before we left, they were correct; perhaps it was from literally gritting our teeth for hours on end as we hauled? The most profound change that we both experienced was a new appreciation of, and outlook on, life’s challenges. Over the previous year, Clark and I had had to overcome so many seemingly impossible hurdles and setbacks that we subconsciously developed a very simple, positive and objective attitude towards them. I tried to summarise it in a quote for Australian Geographic: ‘Break problems down into smaller parts, and then fix what can be fixed, abandon what cannot, both mental and physical.’ And I think that’s the crux of it. Applying this philosophy to life’s patchwork of little ‘problems’ back home, Clark and I found that daily troubles just seemed to flatten out against the bigger picture. ‘You’re always so calm about everything,’ we often heard, and we really felt it, too.

  As I walked back into my ex-workplace, Siemens, to thank my boss for letting me finish my work placement early those few months ago, the receptionist pulled me aside. She, too, had followed our progress. ‘What does it feel like?’ she probed. ‘You must feel like you could do almost anything now!’

  I laughed and jokingly reminded her that we didn’t make it to the far side, but, inside, her comment really struck a chord. That was exactly what I felt; not openly or arrogantly so, but I suddenly realised that I now had complete confidence in myself, and believed that if I really wanted to do something, anything, I just had to work towards it. Life was mine to steer, and my opportunities were only limited by my imagination. Except, unfortunately, for the next few months, during which I was sworn to endure my fourth and final work placement for my university scholarship, at Sydney Water’s North Head Sewage Treatment Plant.

  Boy, was that a reality check. When I was on the expedition, the only thing I could be certain of as I lay down my head to sleep each night was that, the next day, I’d likely see and do things that few, if any, had ever seen or done before. It was tremendously motivating. Now back at home and working nine to five, a little bit of me died inside every night as I closed my eyes on yet another utterly predictable day. Waking at the same time every morning, I’d get dressed into the same blue uniform and wait for the same bus surrounded by the same crowd of office workers. Although to be honest, after getting used to the sickeningly sweet, all-pervasive smell of the sewage treatment plant’s chemical masking agent—presumably hiding a much worse smell beneath—the work I was given at the plant was actually quite interesting, and kept me busy.

  For several months, life revolved primarily around post-expedition work, and I met with Clark most weekends. Discovery Channel pulled out of the documentary deal, citing a ‘change of management and focus’ which we were secretly quite relieved about, as from our earlier insight into the kind of documentary they wanted to make, we knew it was one we did not want to appear in. We spent time editing together our video highlights in a bid to entice production funding, but in the end it seemed that, as neither of us died tragically en route or even had a mental breakdown, our story just didn’t have enough drama in it for TV. What’s wrong with a success story for once? we kept wondering, an example of an inspiring adventure that didn’t end in disaster? ‘It’ll be okay,’ Clark said with a grin, ‘we’ll just make the doco ourselves, enter it into film festivals and go from there.’

  It was true; everyone who had heard about our expedition loved it, our sponsors were thrilled with the exposure they had received, and all in all our expedition was heralded as a success. No one, we were relieved to discover, even hinted that we’d failed by not reaching that far side. Except for being in about $15,000 debt between us, we couldn’t have been happier with the outcome of the trip; however, as time ticked past, slowly but surely we began sliding down that slippery slope back towards normality. On Christmas Day I called Willie Laserich, our bush pilot hero, to wish him well and he, like everyone else, asked the recurring question which kept me afloat in the drowning sea of monotony: ‘Where’s the next adventure?’

  ‘No, let’s go somewhere warm!’ Clark rebutted over coffee at my suggestion of returning to Victoria Island to finish the job, and I had to admit he had a point. We also didn’t want to get pigeonholed as just ‘Arctic’ explorers. ‘A desert? Or maybe a jungle?’ We had chatted to most of our previous sponsors about the idea of a ‘next trip’ and were blown away by their almost unconditional support. The CEO of Air Canada basically handed us a map of their flight routes at a lavish Christmas party we spoke at and said, ‘Just let us know …’ Gore-Tex said their fastest growing market was in China, and hinted that if we could come up with a cool trip over there somewhere, ‘funding wouldn’t be an issue’. The world, it seemed, was our oyster.

  Scrolling excitedly around and zooming in on worldwide satellite imagery just released by Google Earth, we soon came up with countless amazing adventure destinations. ‘Let’s sit down and define what we want from a perfect adventure,’ I said, pulling out a sheet of paper. After much umming and ahhing, we essentially developed a mission statement for our philosophy on adventuring:

  Defining the true spirit of adventure is difficult, but we feel it important that our journeys be unique and innovative. We are not inspired by simply trying to break or better records; to us, that’s a competition, not an adventure. Adventure should be about trying something new and embracing the unknown—finding yourself on the very edge of what is possible physically, mentally and technologically.

  We don’t set out to try and ‘conquer’ the elements, but instead experience them and endure them when we must. Outside your comfort zone, existence becomes both wonderfully simple and brutally honest. It’s about living life, not glory.

  Safety is always our number one priority. Risks are inherent in all adventures and certainly no adventure is worth dying for, but through meticulous planning and preparation we focus on reducing these risks down to a level we feel comfortable with. In today’s increasingly secure and almost numbingly comfortable lifestyle, to a certain extent a little responsible risk-taking and occasionally ‘doing it tough’ enables one to truly feel alive.

  In this light, we started culling back our options. We figured our location had to be remote, else if we passed any vil
lages then various absurd conundrums cropped up: Do we stop at these communities and ‘experience the culture’? No—while no doubt very interesting, such ‘stopping along the way’ trips were more ‘personal journeys’ than full-on expeditions. Do we then travel around and avoid any towns? No—that quickly becomes pretty stupid; tediously winding around perfectly good accommodation and supplies, while pretending we’re somehow achieving something by doing it ‘the hard way’.

  We mulled over the atlas for weeks. ‘If it’s going to be unsupported and months long,’ I pondered aloud, ‘we’ll be taking a hell of a lot of gear with us. We can’t just hike with a backpack. So it’s got to be either a raft/kayak trip, or another hauling trip.’ Clark agreed, and for several days we admired some of Russia’s great river systems in detail before deciding they were either too long to do ‘start to finish’, or passed through too many communities.

  ‘Well, we’re already known as “those crazy guys who build crazy carts”,’ I grinned. ‘It could be our little niche.’ Considering this, Clark eventually nodded.

  Some kind of sled/cart/crazy new vehicle trip it was. But where? We needed a wilderness, diverse in wildlife and terrain, thus requiring a special cart. ‘And it can’t be tree-covered,’ I added in sudden realisation. ‘We can’t exactly haul anything through trees!’ This quickly erased jungles, leaving us with deserts, high-altitude areas above the tree line, or polar wildernesses.

  Deserts we deemed too monotonous, and for several months we planned towards the treeless high Tibetan plateau—we even bought a map—but in the end, there were just too many villages, and we could think of no logical ‘route’ or ‘reason’ for travel from A to B. Our destination options were now reduced to polar regions. ‘We don’t want to do a South Pole trip,’ Clark stated firmly. ‘It gets done so many times each year it’s almost becoming like Mount Everest.’ (Few people seem to realise that over 3000 expeditioners have summitted the world’s highest mountain.)

  ‘Antarctica as a whole is prohibitively expensive and not that diverse, either,’ I pointed out.

  ‘We could always develop some new cart or vehicle to traverse the Antarctic continent? Kite? Solar powered?’ Clark offered. That idea soon grew stale as well, and we found ourselves turning to the only region of accessible, remote, diverse polar wildernesses around the Arctic Archipelago.

  ‘Well, well, well …’ Clark said with a mock sneer, ‘looks like we’re going back to Victoria Island after all!’

  My heart leapt. ‘It’ll be great to finish what we started,’ I said encouragingly. ‘Rather than just trying somewhere else and possibly failing there, too. Let’s go back and show Victoria Island that we’re not beaten!’

  I could see Clark at last warming to the idea. ‘It’ll make for a great doco,’ he said grinning, announcing in a dramatic voice-over tone: ‘After two years of licking their wounds … now it’s personal … and they are returning to dig up the flag … and finish the dream that began … almost four years earlier.’

  Both beaming with excitement, we agreed then and there to do it. There simply was no better place on the planet to do an exciting, diverse, wildlife-filled, lengthy, unsupported, remote adventure than good old Victoria Island.

  LET’S FINISH WHAT WE STARTED!

  By this stage it was October 2006—we’d been back a year and a lot had already happened. We’d both returned to university—I for my final year. I’d somehow caught the eye of a wonderfully attractive and intelligent Russian woman a year above me, just starting her PhD in Electrical Engineering, and to my amazement, she became my first serious girlfriend. Suffering severe adventure withdrawal, I had convinced my good friend Jasper Timm to return to Tassie with me during the midwinter break of 2006 and do the Overland Track—again. Life was great. I was finally reconnecting with my friends, my uni scholarship and a series of public lectures had almost lifted me from Arctic debt, and at last Clark and I had the ‘next adventure’ to plan! Opportunities kept surfacing, and I even got an assignment from UK-based magazine Yachting Monthly to be ‘Crew Leader’ and help sail what is apparently the world’s most famous yacht—Sir Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth IV—from Sydney up to Mooloolaba in Queensland. We got slammed by one of the worst storms to ravage the New South Wales coast all year, with 5-metre waves breaking into the terribly open cockpit, but it was just awesome to be back in my element of adventure—and being paid for it! I’d already decided that Electrical Engineering wasn’t my career path, but being more than halfway through my fifth and final year, I gritted my teeth and kept at it. As with Victoria Island, I figured it’s always a good policy to finish what you start.

  ‘So, do we start back at the east coast, or carry on from where we left off?’ It was a pretty fundamental choice, and we ultimately decided that there really was no point in retracing our steps. This time we had a much clearer purpose—we were going back for an adventure, not to try and set some record for ‘crossing the whole island in one go’ and, as Clark so eloquently put it, ‘I’ve seen the first third of the island, and to be quite honest, I’d be happier if I never saw it again.’ We’d certainly paid our dues for that portion, and so we decided to fly back to our 2005 end point, ceremoniously dig up the flag we’d conveniently left there, and head onwards. ‘In a totally redesigned PAC!’ I said vehemently.

  ‘So, let’s start with what didn’t work with PAC-1,’ I said, trying not to laugh at Clark’s exasperated ‘where do I start?’ expression.

  ‘Well, let’s see …’ he began with a smirk. ‘It sank into the mud, it broke through the ice and the snow, it couldn’t wheel over Death Terrain—’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I cut in, drafting a sketch. ‘So we need bigger wheels …’

  ‘And it was a little heavy,’ Clark reminded me, ‘it leaked, it kept breaking, and converting from wheeled mode to kayak mode was a nightmare.’

  Looking at my drawing, an idea started to form. ‘If the wheels were big enough,’ I pondered, ‘they could provide enough buoyancy to float the whole cart, then we could just wheel the cart right into the water and jump on top!’

  ‘Yeah, but it’d be kinda unstable, wouldn’t it?’ Clark had a point.

  ‘If we could join the two carts together, that’d make it stable, like a giant pontoon, floating on four wheels.’

  Another quick sketch led to a brainwave from Clark. ‘If the carts were wide enough, we could even set the tent up on top!’ he said excitedly. ‘Imagine not having to search for a tent site each night, just haul until we can’t walk any further, clip the PACs together, and bingo, we’ve got ourselves a perfectly flat, smooth table to pitch the tent on!’

  Another stroke of inspiration: absolute minimalism. ‘It wouldn’t even need to be waterproof,’ I thought aloud, ‘the cart could just be a frame with netting slung underneath, and we keep all our gear in giant waterproof bags!’

  It was an exciting idea, and one final masterstroke occurred to us simultaneously: ‘The whole thing could just bolt together out there—’ Clark began, already nodding knowingly as I cut in.

  ‘—just a set of metal tubes! We could even bring the whole PAC with us on the plane from Sydney as check-in luggage!’

  ‘No more shipping and trucking strikes for us!’ Clark laughed eccentrically. The entire PAC-2 concept really was revolutionary, and we spent the next few weekends eagerly designing it in more detail.

  We sucked every scrap of hindsight for all it was worth, and the overall mantra for PAC-2 was that it had to be simple, lightweight, bulletproof and repairable. Even the joints in the frame would be held together using a rubberised clamp rather than a rigid join, absorbing the peak shock-loads instead of fracturing and snapping like PAC-1’s hauling bracket. Well versed in the next step, we were already accumulating all these interesting facts into an ever-growing document, ‘The V.I.2 (Victoria Island 2) Expedition Document’ which we’d soon use to lure our sponsors on board, but not yet.

  By Christmas 2006, I finally finished my Electrical E
ngineering degree, and was a free man. My results were good: I’d managed to get High Distinctions for the majority of courses over the full five years, and my thesis project—developing a wireless network of satellite-linked camera traps for use in wildlife research—turned out to be the only original project (that is, not just selected from a list) undertaken that year, and earned me top grades. Adding further to my resumé, earlier in the year my school of Electrical Engineering put me forward as their candidate for an annual Engineering Leadership award. I documented the project management and problem-solving skills that I used in our 2005 Arctic expedition, and, up against representatives from every other field of engineering across the university, won the award and cash prize. This final lump sum neatly filled in the last trace of Arctic debt.

  Completion of almost seventeen years of formal education brought me to an important crossroad in my life. Having graduated from uni with first-class honours, I had several high-paying job opportunities presented to me—including one to oversee project and logistical management for part of the Royal Australian Air Force—and I had to make a pivotal choice. Around me, all my friends were accepting great jobs at Telstra, Energy Australia, Cochlear—some with amazing starting salaries—yet the idea of getting an office job now horrified me more than ever. The pressure from many people around me, including my dad, was intense. ‘Don’t just throw it all away,’ he said. ‘You need a job, even just for a year or so, to build up some capital and then you can go off on your holidays.’ And most poignant of all, ‘Do you think they’ll still be offering you these jobs three years from now, Christopher, when you’ve been unemployed all that time, just messing about travelling?’