Just been doing a home office cleanup or really clean out as most stuff is going out to the bin. Came across a bit of memorabilia on how I got into kayaking. Met a “mad professor” at a party in the 1970’s and he was into kayaking. Said something about just coming back from walking and rafting down the Amazon river. We became good friends and paddled together, held up the bar in a few pubs, argued politics, stuffed around with polo kayak designs and generally had fun.

“Mac” (few people knew his real name) had many adventures and if you check the secondhand book shops on the web you may even come across a copy of Amazon Journey..From the source to the sea- the adventures of three men and a girl. Author John Ridgeway.Published 1972. Would have been an “interesting” trip with Mac along. Check out Ridgeway’s daughter Rebecca, who became the first woman to paddle a sea kayak around Cape Horn.

Mac was indeed a mad scientist, working at the IMVS labs in South Australia, then the United Arab Emirates, before returning to Darwin to work in tropical diseases.

Sadly he passed away a while ago, from cancer. Not a fitting end for a mad man, but life is terminal. Luckily before Mac’s death his son John was able to take the many boxes of slides he had from the Amazon River adventure, restore them and put onto disk.