In the early 1990s a group of kayakers from the Kraków club Bystrze travelled to the other end of the world to paddle Australian rivers. Among them was Zbigniew Owsiak, from Nowy Sącz, who had joined the club in 1987 and for whom this was the first great expedition. It is mainly from his recollections that we know how it went, and Australia turned out to be only the beginning.
No map and no GPS
They set off almost blind. There was no internet then, no GPS and no proper map of the continent. The only one they had was a school map of Australia from the Institute of Geography at the Jagiellonian University. That there were rivers there for whitewater kayaking they knew only from the accounts of friendly kayakers from Germany. The rest they learned once they arrived, from the local Polish community and the Australian canoe associations.
Work first, adventure later
They spent nearly a year in Australia. Before they ran their first river they spent a long time scouting the terrain, and to have something to live on and to paddle they spent several months picking fruit. It was the early 1990s, barely a few years after the end of communist Poland, and the money they had brought from home meant little here. They caused quite a stir themselves: the kayakers they met along the way could not believe what a distance across the world they had covered just to paddle the rivers here.
Across the ocean with their own food
The food came from Poland together with the kayaks, by ship. They simply could not afford to buy it in Australia, since a loaf of bread cost as much as two days' wages back home. For the locals it was beyond comprehension: that someone had crossed half the world to paddle their rivers, and on top of that had brought his own provisions across the ocean.
What they were looking for on the rivers
It was not about a long trip, about covering a hundred or two hundred kilometres. Whitewater kayaking means short stretches, usually a dozen or so kilometres, where what counts is either the hard, technical run through waterfalls, drops and waves, or places you cannot see from the road. Sometimes, as Owsiak put it, they chose an easier river, giving up the thrill but getting the views in return. In Australia they looked for wild, rarely visited rivers, like the ones they knew from Europe, from the Tara in Montenegro or the Verdon gorge in France.
The next expedition, to the source of the Nile
After Australia Owsiak was not sure he wanted to set off like that again. And yet he was quickly talked into the next expedition, this time to the source of the Nile. In 1993 they were paddling in Rwanda and a hundred people were running after them along both banks. The water was growing harder and harder, and the car they had arranged was nowhere to be seen. Night was falling, and in that zone dusk comes suddenly, as if someone had switched off the light, and the temperature drops to zero. They pulled in to the bank, but the locals who had been running after them a moment earlier were gone. Only after two hours did people arrive with torches, and among them a teacher who spoke English. He explained that the locals were afraid of them, because in their helmets and with their kayaks they had been taken for soldiers carrying rockets. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, those same people helped them get through the night: they lit a fire and gave them food. A year later the same country saw a genocide, and only then did they understand how close they had been.
Twenty years of waiting
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado was the one the club waited for longest. In 1994 the team reached it, but was let onto the water only above and below the canyon proper; for the rest you had to sign up and wait your turn. Permission came after nineteen years, with a precise date: they were to report at the spot on 6 August 2013 at nine in the morning. For eighteen days they paddled, fourteen people from Poland together with two Americans handling the rafts that carried the gear. The park had hard rules that at first they laughed at, for instance that in the canyon you may leave nothing behind but sweat and urine, and a crumb of bread has to be shaken off into the river. They soon understood why: a crumb draws ants, ants draw bigger animals, and so a chain starts moving in which a human being can be the last link. When he reached the end, despite forty degrees of heat Owsiak said only that he would do it again.