"In September 1939, a man in a canoe paddled up to the shores of Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, Australia. If he looked a little worse for wear, you could forgive him — his voyage had begun seven years and four months ago on the other side of the planet, in Germany.
"Oskar Speck holds the astonishing achievement of having travelled over 50,000 kilometres (31,068 miles) from Germany to Australia via canoe, traversing mainland rivers and continental coastlines, with only a minimal number of road journeys to bridge the necessary gaps."
Well, the Europeans call Speck's craft a canoe. Although in North America we'd call it a kayak, it wasn't much different from John McGregor's famous Rob Roy of the 1860s, a decked canoe that was sailed and paddled with a double blade, and Speck's journey deserves to be familiar to all as one of the greatest paddling accomplishments in history.
ARTICLE with original Speck video