When I was about ten years of age, I made a decision that would impact my life forever and influence the lives of thousands of people around the world. Of course, I did not know the ramifications at the time.

One Friday night, Ernie Pearse, who at that stage was the South African champion marathon canoeist, and I were attending a Natal Canoe Club meeting in Pietermaritzburg. The chairman, Vic Gray, asked everyone present to stand and bow our heads in a minute of silence for two fellow canoeists who had just lost their lives on the Tugela River.

I did not know who they were, but while the other club members were paying their respects, I quietly set myself a goal—to become the first person to canoe the Tugela River and live. I simply could not see the point of being a dead hero.

That night, when I got home, I couldn’t wait to tell my father what I had decided to do one day when I was big. He simply put his hand on my head and said, “It’s time for bed.” Looking back, that was a typical response from my father.

The next day I couldn’t wait to get to school and tell my friends what I had decided to do. They laughed and started calling me Tugela Boy. That just made me mad. I’d show them.

Eight years later, while working at the South African Railways Travel Bureau, I received a phone call from Robby Stewart of the Kingfisher Canoe Club in Durban.

“Tugela Boy,” he said, “I just thought you would like to know that we are canoeing the Tugela in April. Kiss goodbye to your dream.”

I loved the rivalry between us.

I put the phone down, got up, walked into my boss Jack Goodwin’s office and asked for immediate leave. He laughed and said no.

“Then I’ll take unpaid leave,” I replied.

“No, you won’t. By the way, why do you want the leave?”

When I told him, he pushed his chair back and laughed.

“Forget it. You’ll get killed, and then it will be my fault for letting you go.”

I laughed, looked him straight in the eyes and quit. I simply walked out and never even went back for my wages.

Now I was a young man on a mission.

I went back to the YMCA where I was living, took out my long ticky (a piece of wire that, if you knew how, could make a phone box think you had paid for the call), and started phoning every canoeist I thought would like to become a hero with me on the Tugela.

No takers.

They all laughed.

“You’ll get killed,” was the standard reply.

By suppertime I knew I had to make a different plan. I sat down to eat next to a crazy fool called Fox Ledeboer. (He really was crazy. As a schoolboy he used to lower his little sister over the edge of a cliff in the Drakensberg to steal eagles’ eggs for his collection.)

By the end of supper, I had a partner.

The next day he resigned from his job.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

Within a week we had built a Canadian canoe—the only type capable of carrying all the equipment we would need. We arranged all the permits to canoe through the “native reserves”, as they were known in those days.

Everything was ready, except we had no way of getting ourselves, the canoe and all our equipment from Pietermaritzburg to the Drakensberg.

None of our friends with cars—and there weren’t many—wanted to be part of what they considered our suicide mission.

Eventually I persuaded my sister’s boyfriend to help us, much to my sister’s disgust.

My parents had told me I couldn’t go, and Fox had conveniently forgotten to tell his parents.

So what?

We were going anyway.

Incidentally, Fox was not a canoeist. Neither of us had ever paddled a Canadian canoe with a single-bladed paddle before. The only time we put the canoe in the water before the expedition was in the fishpond at the YMCA to work out how best to pack it.

We must have been crazy!

The only thing we knew for certain was that nothing was going to stop us.

The night before we left, we took the story to the newspaper, knowing that when it was published, we would already be halfway to the mountains.

Near Bergville, Janet—my sister—turned to me and said quietly, “Dave, you are going to get killed on this river.”

I just smiled.

Then, to my amazement, I heard a voice from deep inside me saying:

“I’d rather die on the river than live on the riverbank and watch someone else make my dream come true. Don’t worry—we’ll be fine. Dead, I’ll prove to the world that their judgement of me is correct. Alive, I will prove myself to myself.”

It took the entire month of March 1965, but we did it.

We became the first people ever to canoe the Tugela River from the mountains to the sea—and live.

Fox went on to become manager of one of the Springbok canoeing teams, and I ended up travelling the world teaching people that he who attempts the impossible has little competition, and that the Universe will always come to the aid of a person with a great plan who is prepared to commit everything to their dream.

There is greatness deep down inside us all. Life is the process of learning to let it out.

By David Pickard Wyllie