Beau Miles
Wild talks to this multitalented sea kayaker, teacher, film maker, barn builder, runner, bushwalker and, dare we say it, adventurer…
Interview by Ross Taylor, uncredited photos by Ben Brunt
Between the ages of 18 and 20, like most young men, I had a few life-defining moments. I was going to be an elite soldier, I was signed up, then saw Saving Private Ryan and pulled the pin. I always wanted a life of adventure, climbing trees, jumping out of planes and going for big long runs across the woods, doing cool stuff, but I didn’t want to be a killing machine. The next big moment was reading Into Thin Air. After that I saved and went to Everest. At 19 I walked the old Everest 1953 expedition route, walking solo for a month. It was spectacular and I guess that started things.
I like physical transport. Riding, in a sense, any Tom, Dick or Harry can do, you’ve really got to know your stuff a bit more to go out to sea in a very small vessel. I think it lends itself to adventure. You know if you are cycling and you get a puncture you can sit down, next to the road, put your tent up and have a cup of tea and fix the puncture. You get a puncture in your boat and you’re out there, five to ten kilometres offshore and you’ve really got to fix it and dial in everything you’ve got just to resolve the situation. I guess that’s why a lot of people don’t do it.
Solo adventures appeal to me because we are so busy and human-oriented, there are always people around us, we are always thinking about someone or calling them, so it is good to get away from that. And you appreciate humans a lot more when you are not around them. I also like the fact that when you are by yourself you learn a lot more: your own mistakes are your own mistakes. You can’t look over your shoulder and say what the hell happened here? I do get lonely, but that’s the whole point. You come back into land and you’re like, ‘Wow, everything is amazing.’ Things take on a different light. Little things become incredible.
Before the Africa Paddle I did a trip across the three main island chains between Adelaide and Perth: the Joseph Banks Group, the Nuyts Archipelago and the Recherche Archipelago. That was a six or seven week solo trip in the Southern Ocean, super big rolling swell. I was 23 and really green. I called the film project The Green Paddle because I had only spent around ten days at sea before that. I was really hanging myself out there. But that is the beauty of being a young man, you don’t realise the potential dangers. In a sense, that is why I have to get my act together to concoct a masterpiece before I get too old and sensible, because you get scared more and more all the time. As you get older there are ever increasing reasons not to be frivolous with your life. You’ve got more to come home to.
I have never been so scared as I was in Africa out at sea. The mantra was if the wind wasn’t too bad and I could get out through the break(s), then I would go. Obviously if you get dumped back on the beach two or three times then you’ve got to set your tent back up and wait. This particular day I got out. Only just. The day deteriorated. It was a following wind but it started to flank more and really howl. I was caught between a shore reef and a big, almost continental reef, and I was being funnelled between the two. The swell got bigger and following a lee wind you lose rudder control and you’re getting smacked around. Even your own edging and steering ability without the rudder gets very hard. So you constantly have to put your boat in the right direction. I could feel the swell getting bigger; it was like paddling through the Yorkshire Dales. You lose sight of land, you lose sight of everything in these mini mountains and it got to the stage where I thought, shit one of these is surely going to break. I knew I was getting closer to the two reefs, I was running off aviation maps, so I didn’t have charts. And sure enough, about half an hour from port, I see this big, blue mass out on the lefthand side getting steeper. And you have what seems like a minute, but it was probably ten seconds: you’ve either got to go madly back paddle or try to smack into it. So I paddled headlong into it and I got over it, but only just. I got scared in the aftermath, you don’t really have time in that moment. Probably that night was the worst. I lay awake thinking I don’t want to go out tomorrow. You hope for the wind to blow the wrong direction, just so you don’t have to leave the beach.
A lot of people ask me about the filming, because many people love adventuring without any sort of attachments – it is a very purist perspective. But I don’t want to go off adventuring purely for my own sake or for charity, taking a camera with me pays my way. Africa cost me a lot of money, as have other trips. By making a film, two or three years later I can recoup some dollars. And I like the process of filmmaking – that is a solo thing too, the camera becomes my ‘Wilson’, you talk to the camera. I have wasted a lot of film stock having conversations with the camera. I also get a lot from people’s responses, the curious and engaged response from crowds, although I don’t like watching Africa By Kayak any more. Since its final cut I have toured the film a lot this year and I’m at the stage where I’ve got to walk out of the room, I am sick of myself, I am sick of the ego. I need a new project. But you know it takes years to move on from a big adventure, because you’ve got this box full of tapes and it makes a mockery of all the time and money you’ve spent, the worry you’ve given your family, if you don’t make it into a product. But the process can be really rewarding too.
I am passionate about my work. I have found a really good niche working with tertiary students at Monash University. You do the hard yards for years as a guide, taking out 14 or 15 year olds. In every given class you might only have five or six who want to be there, so it is a lot of hard work. By taking our 20-year-olds who are paying to be there, and who are all dead keen and fit, healthy young people, you can really concentrate on the softer skills of it all and I suppose on the bigger teachings of life. The bonus about taking 20-year-olds – I am only just out of my twenties – is it is like going away with a group of friends, which helps with connections. At the same time, there is enough of a buffer, age wise, to be a mentor and a legitimate teacher. Logged days in the field certainly contribute to teachable knowledge.
I am pretty sore at the moment. My latest project is a big run – just under 700 kilometres – here in Australia. I am keeping it on the lowdown and just training my bum off until D-Day, which is in March. I am hoping to do the run in 14 days. I think it is quite achievable. It will be supported at this stage, I have a few friends, filmmaking chaps, who may meet in the evenings at accessible four-wheel drive spots, hand me cups of tea when I come into camp. I will probably film the project, the daily rigour, blisters, navigation, weather, incredible landscape. It is very much a Forest Gump thing – which people yell out at me when I’m running at home with beard and flapping hat. I’m not much a fan of racing others, just myself and my body. I did an adventure race in Vanuatu recently, I enjoyed it immensely, but ultimately racing others is not my thing. It is hectic and controlled and mapped and a race against others. I really want to race myself, run simply because it gets me somewhere, for sunsets and mountaintops and the bush silence. And, I suppose something that hasn’t been run.
I don’t think of myself as an adventurer. I think it of as wanky, a bit of bullshit. I certainly wouldn’t put it on my passport application: adventurer. I would put down barn builder or runner – filmmaker maybe. I would put a lot of things before adventurer. I think a lot of people like being called adventurers because it sounds good.
My mentor is Brian Wattchow, a work colleague at Monash university and course director. He has done some incredible journeys and is a wonderful paddler, very much a grounding force in my education and a good mate. Given half a chance I won’t say anything for a week, and then in some situations, like now, I ramble off more words than the week combined. Brian very rarely does that – he is a man who says something only when he needs to. I like that in people. When you can sit in the company of someone all week and really not know what they have done in their life, living in the present. I think there is huge humility to that. I would like to be at a barbie in ten years time and people know me for what I did the day before, or the week before and not for paddling around some continent 20 years earlier. That becomes old hat, it is like a musician who is a one hit wonder – I don’t want to be that person.
