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A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:05 PM Page i A Step Too Far A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page ii A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page iii A Step Too Far PETER BLAND and the obsession of adventure RICHARD YALLOP A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page iv A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page v To Julia and Jay, without whom I would not be here today – P.B. A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page vi First published 2002 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd St Martins Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney Copyright © Peter Bland 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Yallop, Richard. A step too far: Peter Bland and the obsession of adventure. ISBN 0 7329 1154 0. 1. Bland, Peter. 2. Adventure and adventurers. 3. South Pole – Description and travel. 4. North Pole – Description and travel. I. Title. 919.8 Set in 13/16 pt Adobe Garamond by Midland Typesetters Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page vii FOREWORD USUALLY WE READ OF heroes without the stories behind them and their families, and the consequences of their actions. Peter Bland tells it all. Great heroes like him face adversity with courage and a certain conviction. They accept the doctrine that ‘no great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty’ or, as Kipling put it, ‘to take your chance in the thick of a rush’. Peter’s adventures have been on a daunting if not epic scale. To my mind, he is really a Homeric figure. Understand that Captain Cook predicted that no man would ever venture to a land he believed lay to the south, yet the first reported sighting in 1820 started a fascination with the Antarctic that has since been unbridled. The heroics and dramas of the Mawson and Shackleton expeditions, plus the experiences of Scott, Amundsen, Herbert, Wilkes and others, partly explain why those of this day are drawn to it. A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page viii Our adventurer confides that Antarctica ‘exercises an exces- sive hold’ on those wishing to test their powers of endurance. Mawson’s return to Commonwealth Bay is a powerful illus- tration, but of course our modern day adventurer had no idea that he would also become involved in a saga of survival which had echoes of Mawson’s experience. So the boy from the land of droughts and flooding rains set his plans for a second time to tackle the ice continent of glaciers and forbidding crevasses where men have perished without trace. It’s a continent the size of Australia and Europe combined. Peter’s family was always afraid of his fearlessness and was concerned that he had no sense of his own mortality. However, challenging himself in harsh and hostile environments is some- thing he loves to do, with an inner spirit fashioned by Anzac histories and stories of Australian pioneers. They provided him with models of achievement and determination. Undaunted after two bouts of major heart surgery, the adren- alin rush continued. In studying the man, we have this extraordinary catalogue of actions and adventures: windsurfing, trekking, shearing, sailing, fencing and paragliding. Conquering the two poles, sailing the oceans and traversing the Antarctic, we experience by word his perilous drama and desperate rescue, which he survived because of the stoic qualities within him and within his associates. Along with all of this, he communicates the romance of facing the elements and being off the beaten track at places like Gizo, Crookhaven, Horta, Guadeloupe, Canouan and Charcot Bay. It’s a graphic account that leaves us in awe. Tony Charlton A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page ix CONTENTS List of maps xi ONE The Great White Chaos 1 TWO Into the Abyss 31 THREE Scarred for Life 59 FOUR A Date with Endurance 80 FIVE When No Means Yes 103 SIX Another Day in Paradise 115 SEVEN Next Stop Japan 136 EIGHT One Below Zero 154 A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page x NINE Aussie Heart Hero 182 TEN Breaking Free 204 ELEVEN The Rescue 219 TWELVE The Aftermath 250 POSTSCRIPT A Mother’s Pride and Heartache 282 Acknowledgements for a Life and Rescue 286 Bibliography 290 A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page xi LIST OF MAPS South America and the Antarctic peninsula 19 Crossing the Antarctic peninsula 27 Crossing the North Atlantic 130 Osaka to Melbourne 142 Journey to the South Magnetic Pole 158 Journey to the North Magnetic Pole 194 Sketch of Antarctic rescue 238 xi A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page xii A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page 1 Chapter One THE GREAT WHITE CHAOS SLEEPING IN CAN SOMETIMES disrupt a day’s arrangements in unforeseeable ways, but for Peter Bland on 29 December 2000 it sparked a chain of consequences that were to prove almost catastrophic. He prided himself on planning and logistics, but the final month’s preparation for his two-man crossing of the Antarctic peninsula with his old Melbourne schoolfriend Jay Watson had been fraught with difficulty. There are two parts to an Antarctic campaign – raising the cash and putting in place the support team, and crossing the ice and braving the blizzards. In some cases facing the bankers was harder than facing the elements, and so it proved on this trip. A month before he was due to depart his main sponsor, a Melbourne commercial real estate agent, withdrew their $60,000 backing, forcing him back to square one. He was selling potential 1 A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page 2 A STEP TOO FAR sponsors the message that he and Watson intended to become the first people to do the crossing unassisted. The British explorer Sir Wally Herbert had crossed the peninsula supported by a team of dogs in 1957, but for environmental reasons dogs had been banned from the great white land since the international Antarctic agreement of 1991. Now Bland and Watson planned to write themselves into the region’s history books by walking across the peninsula unaccompa- nied, hauling behind them kayaks doubling up as sleds, which would carry all their food and equipment. The more people suggested to 32-year-old Bland that he shouldn’t be doing the trip, the more determined he became. People said he was mad to go, after having major heart surgery as a child of eight and again when he was 28. He couldn’t see what they were making such a fuss about. He was in good company. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great British Antarctic explorer, fought to overcome heart problems all his life, refusing for most of the time to be examined by doctors. In fact, it was a heart attack that ended Shackleton’s life – in South Georgia Island, close to Antarctica, when he was only 48. For Bland and Watson to visit Antarctica they had to obtain a permit from Australia’s Antarctic Division of the Department of Heritage and Environment, based in Hobart. A senior policy officer from the division, Martin Betts, had expressed concerns about the proposed expedition to Watson. Betts was worried about the insurance aspect; what if one of the pair had an accident, and they needed to be airlifted out? Who would pay for it? Bland and Watson had been warned, but there was no stopping them. Bland had looked into insurance and had heard that it would cost $350,000 to insure the pair of them – a sum 2 A Step Too Far —TEXT PAGES 19/11/08 3:06 PM Page 3 The Great White Chaos that was way beyond his financial means. Instead, he and Watson had organised their own insurance – a back-up support crew aboard the yacht Tooluka, skippered by Gippsland fish- erman and Antarctic adventurer Roger Wallis, who would sail along the Antarctic coast, as close as possible to where Bland and Watson were trekking. In an emergency, Bland could contact the crew with his high-frequency radio, and they could arrange to get help to an injured person. In Hobart, Betts and the government’s Antarctic division were increasingly worried about the number of adventurers now sailing down to Antarctica to chase a new piece of history by becoming the first person to travel this particular route, or live for an entire year on that particular part of the Antarctic continent. Like the Himalayan peak of Everest with its competing teams of climbers, Antarctica had become the last great frontier for adventurers fuelled by ambition to confront nature at her most wild. Even as Bland prepared to leave Melbourne for Antarctica, a team of New Zealanders was making ready to paddle in kayaks along the north coast of the Antarctic continent. Betts had 35 years’ experience of working in and on Antarctica, and he advised on all non-government trips.