WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF VICTORIA ISLAND? It’s one of those landscapes that doesn’t have any large sweeping distances, fjords or something exquisitely beautiful. It’s a really

intriguing island. Although it’s quite flat, plain and boring at first glance. It’s like a desert. The beauty is in all the small little things, for example the animals and little rivers

here and there. Once you get down on the ground and you spend a bit of time there it’s actually quite a beautiful area. YOU HAD TO HAUL YOUR CART OVER THE WHOLE ISLAND. WHAT WAS THE BEST AND

WHAT WAS THE WORST TERRAIN? (Laughing) It was all bad! But worst was probably the mud. It was very sticky. Progress was very slow and difficult and generally unpleasant. It happened a few

then other things like really sharp rock which is quite easy to roll over, turned to tear our tyres apart. And that wasn’t a lot of fun. Going down a large river for about 200 kilometres

(120 miles) was the best part of the journey. We got 50 or 60 kilometres (30 to 40 miles) every single day, just sitting on top of the raft enjoying the ride. HOW FAR WOULD YOU GET ON A

NORMAL DAY? Normally on any given day we might get five or six kilometres (three to four miles). Not much at all! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT ALL DAY LONG? There are lots of tricks you can

play in your mind. The aim is to separate yourself from the physical journey so that your brain can wander and you can think of much more pleasant things that you’re actually doing. A good

thing was listening to music or to audio books. I got the entire Harry Potter series on audio book. That helped a lot. DID MUSIC HAVE AN EFFECT ON WALKING? Yes! And it was quite funny to see

what kind of effect music can have on how fast you are. When we had our iPods on shuffle and Chris was listening to some hardcore dance song, for example, he would suddenly be walking very

quickly. And if I had Bob Marley and Reggae then I would slow right down. BUT COULD YOU HAVE HEARD WILD ANIMALS? We made some precautions. Sometimes we would turn it off. Especially when we

had to communicate a lot. But there were days when it was just open plains, where nothing could sneak up on you from anywhere. It was just hours and hours of the same thing... then you can

listen to some music. HOW DID YOU GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER? We didn’t know each other before the first trip. Originally I wanted to go on the trip with one of my friends and everybody was

interested in doing that until I said. “All right, let’s go” and suddenly everybody didn’t have the money or couldn’t get time off work. So I googled something like “Australian adventurer

from Sydney“ and Chris’s name came up because he had done a big trip in Tasmania before. I contacted him, and nine months after that we were walking across Victoria Island. We didn‘t know

each other that well before we left. DID YOU EVER ARGUE? If you’re spending 24 hours a day 7 hours a week for weeks you tend to get on each others nerves. And that’s normal. There were times

when we were stressed... but no we never had any arguments at all. Team dynamics play such a great role in success or failure of many trips. I was quite lucky that we got along. Our skills

complemented each other and our personalities didn’t clash too much. HOW CAN YOU PREPARE FOR SUCH A TRIP? You can research everything you might expect. You can get yourself prepared

physically. You need to know what kind of equipment you need to bring and prepare yourself mentally as much. But obviously, as soon as you get there most of those plans go out the window and

things change very quickly. The more you prepare the easier it is when you’re out there. It’s one of those things where you jump in and try not to sink. CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE? There

were … eskers (a long winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel). At the time when we discussed what route to take through Victoria Island we saw the eskers on the map and we thought they

were cliffs. And we didn‘t want to make our way through cliffs. When we were flying to our start point our pilot looked on our map and said “Oh, see those things there? You should try to use

it as much as you can“ so we quickly recalculated our route and started from scratch again. An edit of the documentary Chris Bray and Clark Carter made about the crossing will be shown at

the EUROPEAN OUTDOOR FILM TOUR (see end of article for details). See a preview of the film below. AND THE PEOPLE ON THE ISLAND? WHAT WERE THEY LIKE? They were so welcoming and helpful. They

were offering us to stay in their cabin and letting us borrow their gear, to use their tools for some last minute repairs. They took us out for a couple of days at the time and showed us a

whole bunch of really important skills to survive in the wild. Just generally really friendly people. It was really touching for Chris and I. We really couldn’t have done it without the help

of all the people. ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE THEM? They are certainly more relaxed. It‘s a very remote community. And time just slows down there. Arctic time. If you say: “We need something done

in the next hour“ they say: “Yeah yeah yeah...“ and then it take two or three days. There’s just no sense of urgency. DID YOU ADAPT TO THAT MOOD? I think we did eventually. But it took a

long time. We had to accept the fact that‘s that what it was and deal with it. After spending some weeks out there you tend to get in that sort of time frame: you get up when it’s light, you

go to bed at the end of the day, you sleep when you’re tired. It’s quite nice. CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THE VEHICLE THAT YOU‘VE BUILT FOR THE TRIP, ESPECIALLY THE SECOND ONE WITH THE

BIG WHEELS? The second Paddle Amphibious Cart worked really well except for a couple of small things. The wheels were great because they let us roll over the really hard terrain with a lot

of rocks, mud. And when we got to one of the many many lakes you could just get on top and float down there. The problem was, they were tractor innertubes of quite thin rubber. They could

get damaged really easily. So we sawed together with Chris’s Mum's sewing machine some kevlar fabric to wrap around the outside which is really strong and resi- stant. But we found for

some reason that it started to tear apart early on the trip. We were convinced that they weren’t gonna survive the trip and that we had to fail again. Long story short: they did not. But

afterwards they did not look as glamorous than as we started. By the end of the trip we spent more time carefully maintaining the wheels than walking. It took a lot of care and thought to

make them last. I really felt like it was the third team member. DID YOU EXPECT THE AXLE TO BREAK? That was the last thing that we thought. It was quite a surprise. We were going up and down

all these hills and came to this one hill that was just a tiny slope so that we could get on top and ride all the way down to the bottom. But unfortunately with all the weight and us and

the tires which were not quite round any more meant that we snapped the axel. SEE A FULL SLIDESHOW OF THE JOURNEY ACROSS VICTORIA ISLAND That was a pretty bad moment for us. We thought the

trip was over then and there. But then you sit down and have a good think about it... we decided to make the axle narrower. We spent about 12 hours with a tiny little hacksaw blade trying to

cut down the lenght of the whole cart. It wasn’t fun. But it worked. DID YOU HAVE ANY ENCOUNTERS WITH WILD ANIMALS? We saw wild animals every single day. Most places in the Arctic is mostly

covered in ice and snow with very few animals. But during the summer when we went there it just explodes with wildlife. Muskox and caribous and all the wild birds, arctic foxes and wolves,

polar bears. And all these animals are really curious. You could see them run back and forth between curiousity and fear “What the hell is this?“ They would run away, come back and run away

again. That was really entertaining. DID YOU EVER PUT AN ANIMAL ON THE MENU? We did with a ptarmigan. They’re like pigeons. We made ptarmigan burritos. Normally we would eat frozen food. And

we caught some fish as well, which was delicious. We were really lucky. Chris and I are probably the worst fishermen in Australia. But the river had not being fished before, so the fish

would swim right up to you between your legs. It was really easy. WHAT DID IT FEEL LIKE REACHING THE END POINT? Relief, to be honest. Because after a while you start to question if the end

point exists. Chris and I were convinced that something would go wrong on the last hundred meters. And when we finally got there that was such a good feeling. It had been about four years in

the making when we first thought of doing it, failed, came back three years later. Really, an overwhelming feeling of joy. * Interview republished with the permission of the European

Outdoor Film Tour, who conducted the original q & a. 'THE CROSSING', THE DOCUMENTARY OF THEIR TRIP, WILL BE SHOWN AT THE EUROPEAN OUTDOOR FILM TOUR, STARTING IN MANCHESTER ON

SUNDAY. Manchester Dancehouse, 8pm November 25; Glasgow Film Theatre, 8pm November 26; St George's Bristol, 8pm November 27; Royal Geographic Society London, 8pm 28th November. FOR MORE

INFORMATION, go to: heason.net/events/european-outdoor-film-tour. TIckets are £12 in advance or £14 on the door. The expedition website is: 1000hourday.com and the film website is

thecrossingfilm.net