The 1000 Hour Day

by Chris Bray

  The weather was pretty foul by now, raining (typical), and the waves were really dumping on the beach, which made the Zodiac landing quite interesting, but before we knew it we were shaking hands with an enthusiastic man in a red drysuit: ‘I’m Jeff, good to see you guys!’ he said.

  After only a few swampings of the Zodiac in the breaking waves, and a total of three trips out to the formidable tug which meanwhile re-enacted another giant circle to avoid it steaming right past us, eventually Clark and I clambered up a steel ladder and onto the vibrating deck of the Jock McNiven. It was done. We had escaped the clutches of Victoria Island, at last.

  From the bridge-deck, Steve ushered us up and we stepped inside and sealed the door closed behind us. Instantly, the wind and rain stopped. There was warmth all around us. The ground was solid and dry. The air smelt like coffee. Nothing was flapping and flailing around. It was strangely quiet, still and calm. We couldn’t stop smiling; it really hit us both right then.

  ‘Well, Jeff’ll show you guys around, you’ve got a twin cabin to yourselves, fresh sheets on the bed, there’s a washing machine, two hot showers—guess you’ll be wanting to use those—grab a coffee, some food, sleep … It’s 48 hours before we get to “Tuk”… Make yourselves at home, boys!’

  The first person we met down below was the ship’s cook—an extremely gifted chef, Christina—who promptly started mothering us and pushed a steaming mug of coffee into our hands. From that moment on, we have been eating and sleeping and grinning, in no particular order. Sleeping on a soft, real bed with a white pillow, and eating breakfast (French toast, eggs, hash browns, bacon, sausages, toast, cereal, yoghurt—one after the other), lunch (chicken curry, stews, rice, salad), dinner (steak, shepherd’s pie, roasted potatoes, asparagus, gravy), all interspersed with fresh fruit, and tray after tray of freshly baked treats (bran muffins, brownies, biscuits, scones, cup cakes, chocolate cakes, cherry tarts … ). Our poor deprived taste buds are going into overdrive! As Clark said, ‘It’s just one new sensation after another!’

  I think, at last, it’s safe to say that the iiNet 1000 Hour Day Expedition is ‘over’, and has turned out far better in every respect than either of us could ever have hoped for. Gotta run—that smells suspiciously like more chocolate brownies!

  ONWARDS

  What do you do after such an expedition? After four years of inexorable focus, four years of passionately emptying our hearts, minds and souls—and our bank accounts—into such an eccentric, almost quixotic goal like walking across an island?

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ The gaggle of media at Sydney Airport had spun a web of questions even before Clark and I could reach our respective families waiting patiently in the background.

  ‘Go home, chill out and enjoy a good ol’ Aussie meat pie!’ Clark laughed, squeezing through to hug his sister Alexis.

  We had a fantastic welcome-home party hosted by the Canadian Consulate-General in Sydney, Clark and I did a national lecture tour, numerous interviews, were awarded the Australian Geographic Society’s Spirit of Adventure Award and I was elected Chairman of the Australia and New Zealand chapter of the Explorers Club—but in those first few busy weeks, what we craved most was simply time off. Time to soak up the luxurious warmth of the Australian summer, to sleep in without the slightest feeling of guilt, and, for me, time to get to know Jess, who became my very real dream girlfriend.

  As much as we both longed for the days of relaxation to last, we knew they could not. We were both in debt, had no job, Clark was already staring down the barrel of ‘the next expedition’—his looming Indian Ocean row—and I too had plans on the boil. Exciting times; but in the back of my mind, I felt a growing unease.

  ‘We can’t just keep doing this …’ I ventured during one of Clark’s and my frequent catch-ups. He knew exactly where I was coming from: trying to scrape a living from adventure—living one hectic expedition to the next—would not only burn us out very soon, but it would mean we’d never accumulate any real capital, or have time for anything else in our lives. We also both acknowledged a sneaking desire to outdo our previous expedition—always one better, one bigger—or else we’d feel like our careers were going backwards. But in the high-stakes field of adventuring, constantly having to attempt something more extreme in order to chase sponsorship dollars seemed a sure-fire route to an early grave. Besides, we were really struggling trying to think of a better ‘adventure’ than the one we’d just completed.

  ‘Adventure is always going to be part of our lives,’ Clark stated firmly, and I agreed. ‘But we do also need time for other things—such as our friends and girlfriends. And to achieve that—’

  ‘To achieve that, we need to get our foot in the door of some kind of parallel career.’ He nodded acceptingly as I finished his sentence.

  Clark had yet to complete his film and media degree, and ultimately work out a way into his dream role: working on documentaries. I was left pondering how to break into a field that was my passion—the ever more competitive world of professional photography. With every second person these days having a fantastic digital camera and the image market saturated with cheap, amazing photographs just a mouse-click away, it was not going to be easy.

  I’d been back from the Arctic for only two and a half months when Jess and I decided to give bicycle touring a try. We cycled right around Tasmania for three weeks, up until Christmas 2008. The very next morning, on Boxing Day, I left for Antarctica aboard a luxury cruise ship as a volunteer member of their Expedition Team. It was a role that I lucked into through a friend, aided by the fact that I had ice experience and could double as a guest speaker and official photographer.

  To pass the time during the pounding five-day slog south to the frozen continent, I decided to put together a short lecture on photography basics. While most passengers were too seasick to attend, those who did loved it.

  ‘Are you going to do any more of these when you get home?’ one lady asked, at which several others also piped up: ‘Oh, yes! Let us know—we’d all sign up!’

  As I wandered around for the next week helping the guests take photos of penguins, seals and icebergs, I couldn’t help but be struck by the number of amazingly powerful digital SLR cameras everywhere, all cripplingly left on ‘auto-mode’. Forming a plan, as soon as I returned home I registered ‘Chris Bray Photography’ and challenged myself to turn it into a career.

  Although I’d sold a handful of photos, owned great camera gear and had a fair bit of experience, I was by no means a professional photographer. Applying the positive, problem-solving mindset and self-confidence that my expeditions have taught me, however, I found the ensuing success of my photography business surprised even me. My theory was that instead of fighting for a place amongst the ever-rising tide of photographers, I’d embrace this influx and turn it to my advantage by teaching them. I’d show them how to unlock the huge creative potential of their cameras. I decided to make my photography course just one intensive nine-hour day, and to host the courses at zoo function centres, complete with boardroom-style venues for the theory sessions, along with great catering. We could then simply step outside for our practical sessions and immediately be surrounded by a diverse set of photogenic test subjects. As an outdoor and wildlife photography fan, my longer-term aim was to conduct photography safaris, enabling me to eventually mix my passions of adventure, travel and photography. It looked good on paper, and after doing copious research and preparation for several months, I compiled it all into something not dissimilar to an expedition document, and took a deep breath.

  Still in debt from the Arctic, starting the photography business was a slow process but I had a few lucky breaks, including being sent on assignment for Australian Geographic magazine to Papua New Guinea, and also becoming Canon’s ambassador for digital photography in Australia, hosting a series of ‘how to’ photography videos for their ‘World of EOS’ website which directed traffic to mine. Biting the bullet, I borrowed enough money from Jess to hire t
he Taronga Zoo Function Centre in Sydney and held my very first one-day photography course in June 2009, and another two weeks later.

  It was a huge success, and, spurred on by glowing feedback, I gambled all those proceeds on booking more venues in four other states around Australia—and the business took off. What started as just the occasional Saturday soon developed into Jess and me running sell-out courses on both days of every weekend in capital cities around Australia and even in Auckland, New Zealand. I spent all my free time learning and practising hard and promoting my photography, and to my humbled amazement people began describing me as ‘one of Australia’s leading outdoor photographers’, asking me to judge competitions, write photography articles and give advice. Several of my beginner students even started winning international awards! I ran my own marketing campaigns, bought more equipment, redesigned my website and, before I knew it, Jess and I were running our first luxury photography safari down the east coast of Tasmania—complete with chartered helicopters and planes—which sold out within the first half-hour.

  Scheduling time off for adventures—including cycling around New Zealand’s South Island at the end of 2009—a mere eight months after starting up my business, I became the director of my own photography company which now employs Jess and myself.

  Clark, already having committed to his ocean row, spent the ensuing months doggedly preparing for that with his housemate—building the rowboat and all—only to have their major sponsor pull out on them due to the economic downturn, mere months before the race started. It was a terrible blow, but allowed Clark to shift his focus back to university, and he graduated in 2010. Since then, he too has accelerated towards his dream career, initially filming and editing for the likes of Australian Geographic, and now working on our documentary film as well as at the ABC, gaining still more experience, contacts and funds to propel himself onwards to becoming a renowned expedition cameraman and specialist documentary maker. Of course, he too has scheduled in some more adventures; currently he’s focusing on Papua New Guinea and, after that, he’s determined to continue his crusade to row across the Indian Ocean, this time solo.

  In the weeks after I finish this book, Jess and I have scheduled more time off in between photography courses and our upcoming photo safari (two by two-week trips to Kenya in January 2011) to embark on the first stage of our next, bigger adventure. Together we’ve just bought a little wooden 29-foot (8.8 metre) junk-rig yacht, renamed her Teleport and registered her as an Australian sailing vessel, home port Sydney. The only problem is that the yacht is in Halifax—on the east side (or ‘wrong side’!) of Canada. Rather than sailing her home the ‘normal’ way down to the balmy Caribbean, through Panama and across the tropical Pacific Ocean, we’ve decided instead on a more exciting route. After this initial setup season of getting the yacht ready, teaching Jess how to sail and cruising 500 nautical miles north up closer to the Arctic, we’ll fly home but return each subsequent Northern Hemisphere summer for a series of three-month yachting adventures. As the sea ice melts we’ll sail Teleport up the coast of Greenland, over the top of Canada and through the Arctic’s bitter Northwest Passage, to good ol’ Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island—by which time the ocean will have frozen over again. Over the following years we’ll sail onwards to Alaska, over to Siberia, down the Kamchatka Peninsula, maybe then onwards to Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and eventually home.

  Clark and I brought almost nothing home from the Arctic. Having dismantled The Nugget into lengths of aluminium and inner tubes which the resourceful tug boat operators put to good use, and having distributed our outdoor gear to local fishermen in Tuktoyaktuk, our only tangible reminders were a few fossils, a genuinely unbreakable muskox horn spoon, 7000 photos and around 70 hours of video footage—however, the 1000 Hour Day expedition has stayed with us in so many ways.

  I’m not talking about the fact that every so often I wake in a panic when my next-door neighbour inadvertently sets off his burglar alarm, because ironically it uses the exact same dual-tone siren that I built into our polar bear tripwire alarm. Or the fact that to this day as I walk along the beach sometimes, the sight of a large dog paw print splayed into the sand at my feet subconsciously snaps my wandering mind back to wolves. Ignoring these and other mental scars, the expedition really opened up the world to us both.

  Having faced so many challenges which at the time seemed insurmountable—everything from crossing the island as a whole, down to the individual trucking strikes, axle breakages and lost paddles—we have learned how to calmly take life’s difficulties in our stride, and to rationally problem solve to overcome them, piece by piece. Having faced enough failures that truly were impossible to remedy—everything from blowing up a video camera right through to not getting to the far side in 2005—we have subsequently learned how to recognise, acknowledge and accept things that cannot be fixed, and to stay focused and remain positive afterwards. With help often too far away, we learned the importance of teamwork and friendship, careful risk management and decision making, as well as the realisation that revenge, retaliation, grudges and blame can only ever make a situation worse. Having endured feelings of hunger, inescapable cold and at times seemingly unbearable physical and mental torment, we now find that we’re able to dismiss these discomforts when we need to, and therefore have become so much more resilient. In a nutshell, the expedition has made us both realise that we are capable of so much more than we ever thought possible. As Sir Edmund Hillary once said, ‘People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.’

  Unfortunately, in our increasingly risk-averse society, people—especially young people—are inadvertently being discouraged from learning these important life lessons that we discovered, and the profound ramifications of this upon their self-confidence, their motivation, their stress levels, and their overall physical, emotional, social and cognitive development are only just starting to be appreciated. With the western world progressively padded by comforts and conveniences, the notion of real risk and hardship is fast being forgotten. We’re now seeing a world that is becoming increasingly demotivated and fearful, unable to make decisions or handle stress.

  Scientists now understand why this is the case, and it relates to positive feedback in our brain’s ‘incentive–reward’ system. Challenge rewires the brain to be motivated and happy, and a lack of it encourages the opposite. Looking around us, we can’t help but agree. People who challenge themselves—be that in sport, adventure, academically or any other field—often seem to be inexplicably enthused about what they do. It’s their passion—their reason for being—and through this, they seem to gain a heightened appreciation for life in general. Compare this to someone who spends their time sitting around doing nothing, unchallenged and bored. They typically remain the least motivated, the least likely to be enthused about anything, and, significantly, are likely to be the most depressed. Broaden this logic across today’s cotton-wool world, and it should not come as any surprise to learn that depression is actually the number one psychological disorder in the western world today. There is no paradox in the finding that those people living in the safest parts of the world—those with the least to worry about in terms of danger, hunger or disease—are among the most depressed and worried people on Earth.

  All is not lost, however, and the fact that people still pick up and read adventure books like this one is testimony to the primal, subconscious instinct that is still there in our brains, reminding us that there is something exciting and worthwhile about a little responsible risk taking. You don’t need to cross an Arctic island in order to experience an awakening; simply pushing back the limits of your own experiences is one of the most rewarding things you can do in life. I still remember the feeling that grew inside me during my first Tasmania hike—an inexplicably wholesome feeling of appreciation, accomplishment and motivation that has stayed with me. A strange sense that something had been missing from my normal convenient lifestyle back home, and
that in some perverse way, a little hardship and responsible risk taking seemed to fill that void. People who have never set themselves such a challenge often fail to understand why we bothered, and the people who have, never need to ask. Clark and I discovered on our expedition how much we are capable of, and we learned the attitudes required to tackle life’s challenges. More than this, though, throughout the expedition’s dizzying highs and sickening lows, we experienced a level of satisfaction, contentment and happiness that neither of us had known before.

  Adventure may not be the meaning of life, but without it life does start to lose its meaning. Comfort zones only exist so that we know where we must step beyond, when we want to feel alive.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special thanks to Clark Carter: being stuck in the middle of nowhere with only one other person, virtually never out of each other’s sight for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for months on end, under some of the most stressful and unpleasant conditions imaginable, it would be understandable for even the strongest, lifelong friendships to fail. As we know, they often do. How then we—having never even met before our 2005 trip—managed not only to tolerate each other but become the very best of friends I think is nothing short of extraordinary. Without a doubt the best thing to come from this entire four-year epic project is your ongoing friendship. Thanks for everything, mate—there’s just no way any of this could have happened with anyone else, and had you not sent that email out of the blue asking if I wanted to plan a trip, my life would be very different now, that’s for sure! We make quite a team, and I really look forward to conjuring up another expedition with you down the track.