Last week during my usual visit to Vinnies, the little old lady behind the counter complained about the miserable weather. Listening to her accent, I said, "Well, not as miserable as the weather in England." "English?" she remonstrated. "I'm Irish!"
And so began our conversation during which she wanted to know what my accent was. Hearing that I had been a German in the past, she piped up, "Did you know about that chap who paddled all the way from Germany to Australia?" She was a passionate ABC Radio National listener and had heard about Oskar Speck on "Conversations with Richard Fidler".
Very few people in Germany have ever heard of Oskar Speck, and here's this little old lady in an op-shop in Batemans Bay who seems to know all about him, on top of which she's like me a dedicated ABC Radio National listener. A friend for life -or at least whenever we'll meet at Vinnies!
I get this illustration from their article; it seems like a fair exchange
I had first heard about Oskar Speck when I lived and worked on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait where he had made landfall after having spent seven years paddling his tiny kayak from Germany to Australia. There was no internet in those days and it was impossible to find out more.
Only in recent years could I put together enough information to do a write-up in April 2005 - click here. Kayakers from Germany contacted me and I was happy to share with them the material for their own publication. I also suggested to the German magazine "mare" that they publicise Oskar Speck's amazing feat. I had no reply but was pleased to see this article appear in their December 2021/January 2022 issue.
Since those early days when I could find hardly anything about Oskar Speck on the internet, I've been pleased to note that the number of entries has steadily increased as this man deserves a whole lot more publicity. Wikipedia now mentions him, and the NSW Sea Kayak Club has turned it into a three-part story.
The Australian Maritime Museum, which still keeps some Oskar Speck memoribilia, devotes a whole webpage to him, and I could even locate the ABC Radio National recording that the little old lady in Vinnies had listened to just four days ago - click here.
Oskar Speck never left Australia again, and was perhaps too busy getting rich from dealing in precious stones to ever write the hoped-for book.
Another German adventurer of his time, Heinz Helfgen, had from 1951 to 1953 cycled round the world and written a hugely popular book, "Ich radle um die Welt" (I cycle around the world), which Oskar Speck could easily have bettered with his very own "I paddle round the world".
Luckily, a Tobias Friedrich has stepped into the breach, and wrote a fictionalised version of Oskar Speck's record-making paddle under the name "Der Flussregenpfeifer" which has just now appeared in German bookshops. For a "Leseprobe" (if your German is up to it), click here.
