From Hamburg to the open sea
On 13 May 1932, under the grey skies of Hamburg, a young German kayaker named Oskar Speck left home in a folding kayak, planning to paddle all the way to Cyprus to find work in the island’s copper mines. The destination seemed impossibly far, yet his restless spirit had other ideas. Seven and a half years and more than 30,000 miles later, Speck and his kayak would wash up in Australia – where he was promptly arrested.
Arrival in Cyprus, 1934
Almost a year after leaving Hamburg, Speck reached Greece. In spring 1933, he set off from Thessaloniki, crossing the Aegean island by island until he finally reached Cyprus after a perilous solo crossing of more than 100 nautical miles from the southern Turkish coast in his folding Klepper Aerius II kayak.
He likely landed near Larnaca or Famagusta, exhausted and battered by storms. His craft was damaged, and local residents helped him make repairs and recover. According to British colonial records, authorities questioned him, suspicious of a lone German arriving by sea in a period of growing tension in the eastern Mediterranean. After several days of rest and resupply, he was permitted to continue his journey toward Syria.
Changing course
Before reaching Cyprus, Speck had crossed Yugoslavia, Greece and Asia Minor, originally hoping to find work on the island. But as he later admitted to the Australasian Post, that practical plan had long been “drowned at sea”. “Eventually, I wanted far more – to make a kayak journey that would go down in history. That’s when I first told myself: why not Australia?”
The long road east
From Cyprus, Speck continued eastward, paddling through Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, India, Indonesia and New Guinea before finally landing in Australia in September 1939 – just days after the outbreak of the Second World War.
Along the way, he survived storms, illness, and several near-fatal accidents, but also formed friendships with locals who welcomed him ashore. In the Pacific and around New Guinea, he was often met by Indigenous communities who greeted him in their canoes and guided him to safe harbours- moments captured in surviving photographs from his voyage.
Instead of being hailed as a hero upon arrival, he was arrested by Australian authorities as an enemy national and held in prisoner-of-war camps in New South Wales for six years. After the war, he settled permanently in Australia, working in the gemstone trade and living quietly until his death in 1995.
From a journey born of hardship and impulse, the odyssey of one German kayaker became one of the boldest and strangest chapters in twentieth-century maritime history – with Cyprus marking the moment his dream was born.
A modern tribute
In 2016, Australian adventurer Sandy Robson retraced Speck’s extraordinary route by kayak, including his stop in Cyprus, reviving the story of the man whose voyage turned into a legend.
