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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
It sounds like a pilot for a new Fox network live broadcast: a self-searching Manhattan kayak salesman teams up with a rowdy Australian male model to circumnavigate Australia by kayak. Thankfully, though, chest beating and contrived conflict are absent in Eric Stiller's true account of his attempt to kayak the 10,000 miles around Australia with Aussie Tony Brown. What we get instead is a look at the tedium, death-defying stamina, and hilarious blunderings of two men with little experience to prepare them for their chosen expedition. "The Australian coastline is a nightmare of tightly coiled inlets and rocky coves and sheer rock cliff faces and bays as huge and forbidding as Saharan deserts," Stiller muses while he kicks off his training with Brown by paddling around Manhattan. Raised in a family that sells Klepper kayaks, the German-made folding expedition kayaks known for their resilience in violent conditions, Stiller is an expert on the technical details of the equipment. He is not, he admits, accustomed to spending more than three months in a 17-foot-long kayak with anyone, much less Brown, a natural athlete filled with joie de vivre whose navigational strategy is simply, "Just keep Australia on your left, mate."
It sounds like a pilot for a new Fox network live broadcast: a self-searching Manhattan kayak salesman teams up with a rowdy Australian male model to circumnavigate Australia by kayak. Thankfully, though, chest beating and contrived conflict are absent in Eric Stiller's true account of his attempt to kayak the 10,000 miles around Australia with Aussie Tony Brown. What we get instead is a look at the tedium, death-defying stamina, and hilarious blunderings of two men with little experience to prepare them for their chosen expedition. "The Australian coastline is a nightmare of tightly coiled inlets and rocky coves and sheer rock cliff faces and bays as huge and forbidding as Saharan deserts," Stiller muses while he kicks off his training with Brown by paddling around Manhattan. Raised in a family that sells Klepper kayaks, the German-made folding expedition kayaks known for their resilience in violent conditions, Stiller is an expert on the technical details of the equipment. He is not, he admits, accustomed to spending more than three months in a 17-foot-long kayak with anyone, much less Brown, a natural athlete filled with joie de vivre whose navigational strategy is simply, "Just keep Australia on your left, mate."
The curious pair encounters an impressive variety of harrowing sea conditions. The first month is a daily battle against capsizing during beach landings amid Australia's legendary skyscraper-high waves. Marathon paddling sessions through maddening back-eddies rip open their hands and scrape their torsos. The inhospitable Tasman Sea is rife with deadly creatures, including crocodiles, sharks, and sea wasps, a toxic jellyfish with tentacles several meters long. At one point the two must cross the Gulf of Carpenteria, the most arduous leg of the trip, requiring seven days on the water with no land in sight. For all their travails, however, there is relief in the form of friendly hosts (nearly everyone they meet is happy to have a smelly kayak team at the dinner table), striking scenery, wild nights in isolated cities, and the personal reckoning that comes with an effort of this magnitude. --Lolly Merrell
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Idea meets action in this remarkable, though overlong, story of an attempt to paddle around Australia in a two-man kayak. Although ostensibly incompatible teammates, professional New York fitness trainer Stiller and his Australian companion, fashion model Tony Brown, seize the challenge of moving from dream to reality and discover the vertiginous abyss that often separates the two. In their grueling expedition around what many consider one of the most beautiful and treacherous coastlines on the planet, Stiller and Brown are blasted by 12-foot waves, pelted and waterlogged by heavy rain, roasted by the glaring and ubiquitous sun, assailed by sharks, blown off course and benumbed by dank, frigid temperatures. Loneliness, exhaustion, frustration and bickering are finally compounded by the ultimate realization that no amount of rigorous training could have prepared them for this endeavor. Stiller and Brown undergo the most demanding emotional and physical experience of their lives. More than 20 years of kayaking experience shine through in Stiller's myriad detailed, technical descriptions of the physical and mental priming needed for the journey and of the unpredictable imbroglios that arise when maneuvering a two-man kayak on rough seas. However, at times Stiller's hyped descriptions of pinnacle moments and near-calamitous situations fall short of their intended impact. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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