Oskar Speck

Oskar Speck (1907-1995) was a German canoeist who kayaked from Germany to Australia. He left Germany to seek work due to being an unemployed electrical contractor in Hamburg. He initially intended to kayak to Cyprus to work in the copper mines but ended up wanting to continue the journey through Southeast Asia and the Middle East to Australia. Oskar departed from Ulm, Germany in 1932 and arrived in Australia in 1939, at the beginning of the second world war. He was accused of being a spy and was imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp. When the war ended, Oskar was released from imprisonment and later became a successful opal merchant in Sydney.
Early life.
In 1921, aged 14, Oskar left school to work. During the 1920s, kayaking was becoming increasingly popular sport throughout Europe. One of the most common kayaks from the time was called a Sunnschien, which was manufactured by faltboots. They consisted of treated canvas skin that was pulled over a wooden frame. However, as the great depression struck after the first world war, Oskar was unable to find work in his hometown. 
The voyage.
Germany to Cyprus.
Due to the lack of money and the rumours of miners being needed in the Cypriot mines, Oskar decided to kayak, disregarding the risks including dangerous conditions and his inability to swim, Oskar began his journey in May 1932.  Oskar left his town of Ulm by kayaking down the river of Danube until he left Germany and entered Romania. He continued to follow the river until he reached the Bulgarian border. Upon reaching Bulgaria, he left the Danube river and paddled out into the Aegean Sea. Out at sea, Oskar was paddling through high swell and large waves, he had never kayaked out at sea, he narrowly avoided a collision with a cargo ship. Oskar added sails to his kayak as well as splashguards to make the kayak more efficient as well as to keep the kayak from filling up. After these modifications, Oskar was able to travel through the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas by going along the islands and following the coast of Turkey before reaching Cyprus.
Cyprus to Australia.
As Oskar arrived in Cyprus, he continued his adventure and paddled to Australia. To get there he travelled east to Syria to reach the Euphrates River, which he then kayaked down on through Iraq to get to the Persian Gulf. Along the Euphrates, Oskar experienced a lack of food and water, intense heat as well as regularly being shot at by the locals. Further into his trip down the Euphrates River, Oskar was stranded on a small island with a corpse, where he waited for a week for a storm to pass. When Oskar reached the Gulf, he continued to paddle down along the coast of Iran where he stayed for six months waiting for a new kayak to arrive. However, during his wait, he became ill and contracted malaria, which stayed with him throughout the rest of the voyage. Oskar did not resume his voyage until September 1934, when he continued east through the Arabian Sea. After a few months, Oskar arrived on the coast of Pakistan, where he stopped at various ports to trade stories of his voyage for food, water, and shelter. This allowed him to gain fame which further allowed him to fund the rest of his trip. Around this period, Nazi Germany had begun to develop, as a result, rumours of Oskar being a German spy also began to develop. Various stories of Oskar’s kayak being able to fly, and dive led to him being arrested at the next port he rested at; however, he releases two days later and resumed his trip. As Oskar reached Sri Lanka, he spent three months there to avoid the monsoon season. 
When the monsoon season passed and Oskar was back on the water, he reached Chennai where got a new kayak, he then continued to travel along the coast of India until he reached Kolkata in January 1936. A few months later, just off the Burmese coast, Oskar happened to kayak through another monsoon. He would be driven off course, and he would spend 30-40 hours paddling to get himself back on route. As Oskar left Singapore on another new kayak, he headed to Jakarta, from which he continued to paddle east. However, he was often dehydrated, exhausted and sunburnt and unable to find a food supply. During this stage in his voyage, Oskar was also stricken down with malaria again, as a result the voyage was again interrupted. 
During this period, locals which were initially welcomed Oskar, would turn hostile due to language barrier between the German migrant and the locals. An incident occurred in Indonesia where he was beaten by 20 men leaving him semi-conscious with a punctured eardrum. Oskar managed to escape by chewing through the ropes he was tied with before sailing away in his kayak. Back out at sea, he was not permitted to travel a shorter route, but rather a longer via the north of New Guinea. Oskar reached Port Moresby in August, before continuing down to the Saibai Island in the far north of Australia, in September 1939. The voyage took Oskar seven years and four months. Upon arrival, a group of locals welcomed Oskar, but he was arrested by three police officers among the locals and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp due to his German background.