by Chris Bray
Shaking his head, the old man said, ‘No, no, I mean how long will this test take? I want to go for a swim.’
Bobbing merrily around like a cork, the PAC-2’s wheels barely even sank into the water at all. ‘Tick PAC-2 floats!’ I shouted.
After a day’s exciting retail therapy buying all our amazing outdoor gear at one of our major sponsors, Paddy Pallin, the next thing we needed to do was to cold-test all our electrical gear. The operating temperature of our GPS, satellite phones, cameras, ASUS ‘Eee PC’ laptops and video cameras were all only rated down to 0 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, the average household freezer only gets down to about minus 18, which just wasn’t cold enough. But thankfully Clark finally located a giant warehouse freezer the size of a soccer field which went down to minus 40 degrees, allowing us to test all our equipment, including our PACS, in real Arctic temperatures.
It was potentially a very expensive morning’s entertainment, loading tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of brand-new high-end electronics into the huge freezer, and standing around shivering as we watched the thermometer fall. Frost was now forming on my beard—even sticking my eyelashes together—and still the laptop, the video camera, our redesigned bear alarm and everything else soldiered onwards down to minus 30 degrees Celsius. The LCD screens became a little sluggish as the ‘liquid’ in them turned viscous, but all devices—amazingly—still worked at minus 38 degrees, the coldest we got. ‘All right, I’m done,’ said Clark, shivering. ‘Let’s get outta here.’
On our way out, one of the operators pulled us aside, shook his head and said, ‘Guys, I’ve worked here in the cold for years, I know what it’s like. So, why the f*&k you boys’d want to go there for the fun of it—you must be crazy, I reckon.’
As the weeks rushed by, our To-Do list shortened and our sponsor list grew. Due in part to some lucky shots I took last expedition, Canon surprised us by agreeing to provide some amazing camera gear, and ASUS, the makers of the brilliant little Eee PC netbook computers that we’d written rave reviews about on our website after successfully freezer-testing them, jumped on board as major sponsors of the expedition. The jewel in our sponsorship crown—the naming rights—was snaffled up by ever-expanding and user-friendly internet service provider iiNet, and complete with an integrated educational program linking every facet of our expedition into the Australian school curriculum, the iiNet 1000 Hour Day Expedition moved into its final stages of preparation.
Early in May, I was surprised to receive a phone call at 3 am. ‘Mr Bray, I’m from the credit card fraud squad. I’m sorry to call you at this hour … are you in Australia at the moment?’ Blinking stupidly at my watch, I assured the female caller that I was. ‘Because someone has just used your credit card to buy about $2000 worth of,’ she paused, ‘of what looks like … groceries, over in Canada.’
My alarm gave way to amusement. ‘Oh, right, yes!’ I said, grinning, ‘I guess my shopping order has gone through; thanks!’ A day earlier I’d ordered all our food for the expedition, including 25 kilograms of chocolate, 20 kilograms of cashews, 10 kilograms of peanut butter, 400 burrito tortilla flatbreads, 200 freeze-dried meals, 19 kilograms of milk powder, 17 kilograms of couscous, 5 kilograms of butter and 5 kilograms of lard. All up, approximately 100 kilograms of food each, for 100 days, which should provide enough energy to haul and keep our bodies warm for the duration of the trip, while being as lightweight as possible.
I’d totally redesigned our website, building in forum-style interactivity that we could manage from out on the island, organised competitions to activate at particular stages of the expedition, and even a live tracking system, which would update our position every few minutes and display it on an embedded satellite map. We paid for a friend in Cambridge Bay to buy two brand-new, lightweight shotguns, bullets and bear spray and have it all there waiting for us. Having completed both PAC-2s, we took them for a weekend’s test run out along an abandoned 4WD track in the Blue Mountains, and they exceeded our highest expectations. Noting down just a few minor modifications needed, we began at last to feel that we were getting on top of things. This time, we would be ready.
The final month of madness was bizarre to say the least. Clark stabbed me, we got more sponsorship, and had a doctor advise us to sample some serious drugs. All in a day’s work for Chris and Clark.
But back to the part where Clark stabbed me: one of the big things still to do on our list was to sort out our expedition first-aid kit. Having just done our Remote Area First Aid courses, we were both psyched to put together an awesome first-aid kit, and after compiling a list, Clark was personally ushered around his local Mega Save Chemist by the pharmacist, gradually filling up two huge plastic bags with painkillers, bandages, and antibiotic, anti-nausea, anti-inflammatory and anti-everything-else tablets. Happily, we’d had no cause to use our abdominal pad dressing on our 2005 expedition, and so we didn’t need to buy a new one of those.
Despite probably being able to open our own bulk-buy chemist with the quantity of drugs Clark brought home, we still felt a bit underprepared in the painkiller department, and I called up my local doctor, Peter, and told him so. He invited us around to the surgery, where he stayed back after hours and explained our options. Rather than our carrying morphine, which apparently is a nightmare to travel through Customs with, he suggested a relatively new drug called Tramadol, which comes in both tablet and intramuscular injection form, and, after explaining the dosages, he placed a pile of both varieties in our hands, along with a handful of syringes and medi-swabs.
We both wanted to have our flu vaccine that day too, because being less than a month away from leaving and feeling very run-down, we knew that every possible illness and injury on earth would now try to inflict itself upon us. Peter agreed, and proceeded to inject Clark with the vaccination and then turned to me.
‘I—I was wondering …’ I began, while a little voice inside tried to shut me up, ‘if maybe Clark could give me my flu shot, as practice, under your supervision?’ Clark looked almost as shocked as I was.
‘Well, yes, actually,’ Peter said. ‘I think that would be a great idea.’
A mischievous smile spread across Clark’s face as he ceremoniously snapped the cover off the syringe, and levelled it at the freshly medi-swabbed deltoid muscle on my arm. ‘So I just stab it in? Yeah?’
Peter laughed. I died a little inside. ‘Well, not so much “stab”, as just, you know, “move inwards”.’
I braced myself and Clark ‘moved inwards’. The tip of the needle lodged firmly into my skin and stopped.
‘Wow, it’s harder to poke through than I thought,’ Clark commented.
‘Yes, erm … just keep … moving inwards,’ Peter urged again, and the needle slipped through the skin and slid effortlessly up to the hilt into my muscle.
‘And now I just squeeze it all in?’ The whole process actually only took about two seconds, and despite my trepidation was utterly painless. Clark did a first-rate job.
Wishing us well, Peter refused to accept payment, and said, ‘Now, I’d advise that tonight sometime you both have one of the Tramadol tablets, just to check that you don’t have any abnormal reactions to the drug.’
Our Tramadol party went off without a hitch. In fact, neither of us noticed anything at all. Bit of an anticlimax, really, after the day’s excitement, but at least we went to bed safe in the knowledge that if the house fell on top of us while we slept, we wouldn’t feel a thing.
The final weeks became a blur of last-minute tasks such as presenting sponsor and school talks, cramming about 9000 songs and audio books onto our iPods, throwing a fancy ‘send-off’ party at Ryan’s Bar in the heart of Sydney, being filmed by Discovery Channel Canada for an ‘Australian Special’, and even writing a will and organising our crisis management team, including briefing a friend who would face the media in a worst-case scenario—thus helping to shield our families. There was a series of media events to attend, including several Australia-wide TV news intervie
ws and an appearance on Channel Seven’s nationally broadcast Sunrise breakfast program with ‘Kochie and Mel’ the day before departure, which boosted the number of our followers online considerably. Hurrying out of their studio and wiping off all the obligatory makeup, we dashed to ASUS’s launch of their latest Eee PC, which they actually marketed around our expedition—the promotional posters showing us taking their lightweight, shockproof little netbooks into the Arctic.
The final hours ticked quickly away on our fancy solar-powered Citizen Eco-drive watches (yet another major sponsor), and before we knew it, our last day in Australia had gone.
‘Do you have any bags to check in, sir?’ Shifting uneasily in front of the Air Canada desk at the airport, I nodded innocently. The check-in operator smiled politely, ‘How many bags?’
I looked at her hopefully, ‘Doesn’t it say something about some … erm … excess baggage on my booking details?’
As she scrolled down her computer screen, her eyes lit up. ‘Yes, it says here … “Please waive excess baggage charges”… ?’ She looked quizzically at me and recognition dawned, ‘You’re one of the Arctic explorers! I was told you’d have a few extra pieces of luggage. How many did you say you have?’
Behind me, Clark wheeled forward a tottering pile of bags on a trolley. ‘Wow, that … that’s quite a bit of luggage!’ the operator stammered.
‘Um,’ I gulped awkwardly, ‘there’s still three more trolleys.’ And, sighting Clark now heaving some other objects over, I added, ‘And some things that didn’t fit on the trolley.’ We had dismantled both PAC-2s into a total of four bubble-wrapped packages, including the eight half-rims neatly stacked inside each other, and the giant carbon-fibre hardtops for each cart that concertinaed away into something resembling a large suitcase. Bags 5, 6, 7 and 8 were all large yellow 49-litre submersible Ortlieb duffle bags, and alarmingly, so too were bags 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18—all stuffed full of, amusingly, still more bags folded up, and other expedition gear weighing a total of 290 kilograms.
‘Thanks very much!’ Clark said with a grin, placing the last bag on the conveyor belt. Most of the airport paused to watch the giant yellow caterpillar of identical bags snaking off into the distance.
‘Good luck on your trip, boys,’ she said kindly, handing us our boarding passes, each one bristling with so many baggage receipts that it resembled an origami hedgehog.
A pleasant fourteen-hour flight landed us in Vancouver, where we spent a few days madly shopping for obscure things like ice screws and meeting up with friends as well as Clark’s dad, who happened to be in town for work.
One night, after another evening spent trying to fatten ourselves up with 1-kilogram steak meals and double desserts, we collapsed on our beds and checked our emails. Clark suddenly drew in his breath and I looked over as he stared at the screen. ‘What’s up?’
Still staring at his Eee PC, he said that one of his mates back at home had just broken up with his long-term girlfriend. When I asked why, Clark turned to look at me with an inscrutable expression upon his face.
‘Apparently, she told him that she wants to be with you!? What’s going on, Chris?’
Caught totally by surprise, I just stood there, stunned. For a fraction of a second I was overjoyed—Jess was an absolutely amazing girl, beautiful, bubbly and brimful of ideas—whom I’d met almost half a year earlier during a caving trip she’d organised with some of Clark’s mates. As we shared a few passions such as photography and importantly the outdoors (she was an outdoors wilderness guide), we’d kept in touch and chatted a few times at other social gatherings. Admittedly, we had met up briefly for the occasional short kayak or bike ride, but all with the prior knowledge of her man—and that was it. On her last visit, perhaps a week before we left, I had half fancied that there was ‘something different in the air’ between us, but I couldn’t be sure, and I had pushed those thoughts out of my head as absurd. Now here I was—days before embarking on probably the most testing team-dynamic trial of my life where Clark and I had to be able to trust and rely on each other utterly—standing potentially accused of cheating on one of his best friends.
‘We should probably talk about it now, whatever it is,’ Clark suggested uncomfortably, ‘else there’ll end up being unspoken tension between us for the rest of the trip.’ It was awkward, to say the least, but he was certainly right. Although innocent of what his mates accused me of, I still felt horribly guilty, and worst of all, felt terrible for Clark, caught painfully in the middle, having brought me into his group of friends in the first place. After explaining my side of the story, to his credit—and my relief—Clark agreed that it wasn’t exactly ‘my fault’, and rationalised that we should just set the matter aside until we got home.
However, flying north the next day, I felt the dilemma continued to hang ominously over our heads. Sensing this, Clark backed me up as we boarded our last plane. ‘It’ll be okay, guv, it’s just rather unfortunate timing, that’s all. It’ll sort itself out when we get back.’
Idly flicking my boarding pass, I noticed a little green sticker. ‘Landing subject to weather,’ it read. A welcome distraction. I asked the flight attendant about it. ‘Oh, that just means that we might not be able to land on Victoria Island today; this time of year the weather’s pretty bad.’
‘And if we can’t?’ I enquired, intrigued.
‘Well, the plane will just … land somewhere else.’
Of course it would. Grinning, I felt the pioneering excitement of the North seeping back into my veins.
OUR HOME AWAY FROM HOME
Victoria Island! As the flight attendant opened the door, the cold Arctic wind boisterously elbowed its way inside the cabin, bringing with it a swirling confetti of snow to welcome our arrival. Walking down the stairs onto the icy runway, and traipsing through a carpet of snow to the terminal, we were both struck with a feeling of being home. Though the cold air took our unacclimatised breaths away and the brilliant white glare made us squint, around us were the sights and sounds we had both become so attached to in 2005. The honking of geese returning for the summer, the uniquely flat, lake-strewn landscape, and the unforgettable charm of the Cambridge Bay township in the distance.
No sooner had we sheltered inside the airport when our friend Wilf greeted us heartily, helping to carry our endless parade of bright yellow bags out to his truck. As he held the door open for me, I hurried to catch up. ‘There’s no hurry,’ he chuckled. ‘You’re in the North now, there’s no hurrying up here. Take your time, aye.’
He was right, I had forgotten the timelessness of the Arctic. Drawing a deep breath and exhaling, I felt all the pent-up stress we’d both become accustomed to during the previous year or so exhale with it. Five minutes later at his house, Wilf showed us our room, a fridge full of VB (Australian beer he’d had flown up especially), threw us the keys to his house and to a truck that he’d just dug out of a snow bank the week before for us, and told us that dinner—a barbecue of bacon-wrapped steaks—would be ready in just a few hours. I didn’t think anyone on the island even knew what day we were coming, yet Wilf had already organised everything, and around town, familiar faces lit up when they saw us, and even strangers smiled and waved, asking if we were ‘the two Ossies’.
No sooner had we walked into Willie’s old Adlair Aviation hangar when his son René turned up in the Learjet, having just done another medivac. After helping him push the million-dollar plane back into the hangar, we had a good ol’ yarn. Like father, like son, René sat back in his chair, offered us a coffee and swapped stories while providing us with invaluable tips and advice. Unable to perform off-strip landings for a time, he couldn’t fly us to our start point, and instead suggested we wait around and try to tee up a side charter with a mining company that frequented flights into Cambridge Bay.
Downing the dregs of his coffee, René flicked us a key to the hangar. ‘Well, if we can’t fly you out, we can at least give you our hangar as a base.’ As he stood up,
the door creaked open and an absolutely enormous dog strode in and walked towards us. ‘Solomon!’ It was René’s arctic wolf/malamute cross, without comparison the most incredible dog I’ve ever seen. After investigating each of our eighteen bags, he curled up, head on his massive paws, and watched us slowly assemble the first PAC.
We spent the next few days and nights almost perpetually at the hangar, sometimes until 5 am, finishing the PACs, organising our gear, weighing our food into ration packs, and wiring up electronics, including the GMN XTracker that pinged our position back to our website map every few minutes.
‘Pizza?’
‘Oh, thanks René! I needed that.’ I wonder how many people have Learjet-delivered pizza at 4 am, from a town a thousand kilometres away? Just one of the perks of operating out of a medivac hangar.
Next we picked up our two brand-new 12-gauge pump-action shotguns from a guy who generously bought them for us months ago back on the mainland, along with our bear-spray cans, flares, bear-banger pyrotechnics, ammo and trigger locks. Despite feeling a little black-market, it was actually all 100 per cent legal—I had filled in the paperwork over a year ago—and so we just walked into his house, gave him a fistful of money to pay for all the shopping, and walked out with enough weapons to start a small war. Ironically, the lovely old chap who did all this for us was the local Anglican minister. What a town!
Back at the hangar we asked René where we could go to test the shotgun. ‘Here’s fine,’ he said, and with that, he reached for a bullet, sawed the front off with his pocket knife and removed the projectile, loaded the now empty bullet into the shotgun, pointed it at the side of the hangar and fired.
BANG! It was louder than any of us could have imagined, and even René swore in surprise. ‘It works,’ he said, handing the shotgun back to me with a grin.
