[HN Gopher] Oskar Speck's 1932 Kayak Journey from Germany to Aus...
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       Oskar Speck's 1932 Kayak Journey from Germany to Australia
        
       Author : dividendpayee
       Score  : 68 points
       Date   : 2025-10-11 03:08 UTC (9 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nswskc.wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nswskc.wordpress.com)
        
       | merek wrote:
       | Well worth the read. Absolutely fascinating.
        
       | alex_suzuki wrote:
       | Amazing read!
        
       | lqet wrote:
       | One of his boats (he used four):
       | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/St...
       | 
       | His route:
       | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Speck-ma...
       | 
       | Photograph of him at the Timor coast:
       | https://cdn.mopo.de/uploads/sites/4/2024/04/farbe-oskar-spec...
       | 
       | This seems to be a photograph taken after his arrest:
       | https://lovedaylives.com/app/uploads/2021/03/SPECK-2.jpg
       | 
       | According to the German Wikipedia, he had a small electrical
       | company which went bankrupt during the Great Depression. His
       | original plan was to "only" paddle to Cyprus to work in a copper
       | mine.
        
         | lqet wrote:
         | > Exactly a year after the attack, I left Saumlaki in a new
         | boat, crossed to the Kei islands, and then faced the longest
         | lap of island-hopping to New Guinea.
         | 
         | Indeed, looking at the map of his route, the longest distance
         | he had to actually travel on open sea seems to be around 120 km
         | from the Kei islands to Papua New Guinea [0], which is (at
         | least for me) completely counter-intuitive for a Kayak voyage
         | from Ulm to Australia.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/-4.661/133.234
        
       | hshdhdhehd wrote:
       | No one told him about the war on route?
        
         | Freak_NL wrote:
         | He landed in Australian territory in September 1939. The war
         | had just started on the 1st of that month. Even if he had met
         | someone during those days/weeks, chances are they hadn't heard
         | of Hitler's invasion of Poland either, or were simply not
         | concerned about it.
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | Also his route linked above shows he actually went all along
           | the northern and eastern coast of New Guinea before arriving
           | in Australia, at that time news was probably hard to get in
           | that part of the world!
        
           | netsharc wrote:
           | I remember reading that prior to Indonesia's declaration of
           | independence in Mid-August 1945, in Jakarta (the capital of
           | the Japanese-occupied country), there were rumours that
           | something happened in Japan... 2 atomic bombs, and only
           | rumours!
        
       | hshdhdhehd wrote:
       | Sounds like daily Russian roulette.
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-20 23:02 UTC)