There is historical evidence for the use of kayaks from the tour of 1974/75, although in my naïveté I called them “canoes” or “dinghies” at the time. The diary entry for Tuesday, January 7, 1975 at Blackwood Bay commences:

“I slept in again, and later went out on a canoe.”

I say this because I had booked myself into the uni sports’ flat water paddling group, turned up on time, was given a boat, and then proceeded to make myself into a best example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. After a little more than 100 m of floundering about, I was ordered into the Canadian canoe that is reserved for the less skilled. But in the second week in the Canadian, I met Conny, so it wasn’t all that bad. She basically gave me a rundown of her life so far, which included a stint at Monash, as well as Russia and Japan, and my diary of the following night only had one topic. Read more…