We were locked out of the humble home where country music legend Loretta Lynn grew up and were about to leave Butcher Hollow when someone pulled up in silver Chevy Silverado pickup truck. A trim man with neatly parted gray hair wearing a pair of jeans and a red-checked shirt stepped out of the truck and introduced himself.
“I’m Herman Webb,” he said, shaking my hand.
It took me a minute to realize that this was the brother of country music stars Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gale. But how did he know that we wanted to tour the home they grew up in?
“You were just down at the grocery shop,” he explained, sensing my confusion. “They called and said there was someone here to see the house. I live just 500 feet down the road there, so here I am.”I like old school country music but I’m not so hardcore that I would ordinarily seek out the childhood homes of well-known country music artists. Loretta Lynn, however, is another story. Even if you don’t like country music, you have to love her life story.
The daughter of a coal miner, she was the second of eight children who grew up poor in a place called Butcher Hollow in Van Lear, Kentucky. (It’s pronounced and sometimes spelled Butcher Holler and is named after her mother’s family whose surname was Butcher.) She got married at 15 and had three children by the time she was 19. At 29, she was already a grandmother. Not exactly a textbook formula for success, but after moving out west she was discovered at a talent show in Tacoma and went on to record 16 number one hits, winning four Grammy awards and countless other accolades along the way.
Three of her siblings, sisters Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue, and brother Jay Lee Webb, also pursued careers in country music, though none were as successful as she was. But despite her fame she never forgot her humble roots. Indeed her most recent album is called Van Lear Rose and her best-known hit, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” is all about growing up in the Van Lear coal mines area.
Butcher Hollow is a destination, not a place you just happen to pass through. We were on our way back to Chicago after touring Hatfield-McCoy country in West Virginia and Kentucky and I convinced my wife that an excursion to Lynn’s childhood home was a worthy detour.
We got hopelessly lost but with a little help from some friendly locals we finally found Millers Creek Road, which meanders down to Butcher Hollow. It’s a narrow road that passes through this isolated community of trailers and modest homes. We passed a number of abandoned or burned out homes and shops, and in some ways, it almost seemed like a ghost town until we stopped into Webb Grocery, a small shop filled with Loretta Lynn memorabilia owned by Herman.
The narrow road leading down to the house is overgrown in places, and I kept stopping to get out and look at things that caught my eye: an old white school bus with “Kentucky” written in cursive script and a multicolored flag serving as someone’s curtains; a modest home with a cluttered front porch and a “God Bless America” sign; and a small home that was dwarfed by three huge satellite dishes. The nearest Starbucks, I later confirmed, is an hour and 20 minutes to the north in Huntington, West Virginia. Butcher Hollow is about as off the grid as you can get east of the Mississippi.
After a few minutes of small talk with Herman, 78, on the front porch of the old wooden cabin the family moved to when Loretta was a toddler, he put on one of his sister’s albums and we stepped into the house. The first floor has just two rooms, both with double beds, and a kitchen. (The attic bedrooms are off limits to visitors.) I was immediately struck by how tiny the place is, especially for a huge family, and by the fact that there was graffiti all over the walls.
“I can’t control what they do when they get ahead of you,” Herman explained.
The home is perched on a hilltop and is filled with period antiques the family actually used. Every inch of wall space that isn’t filled with family photos or memorabilia is covered in graffiti – people have signed their names and the date they visited the place or written other messages, like “Welcome to Butcher Holler” to mark their visit.
A trio of teenage girls turned up and Herman led us around the home, telling stories and pointing out the significance of various items on display.
“This is the best piece of furniture I got,” he said in his raspy, Kentucky twang, made horse by a lifetime of work in factories as a painter and welder, grasping a swing positioned in what was once his parent’s bedroom. “This swing was on the porch when I was a little kid.”
He pointed to a photo of his parents and said, “That’s mommy and daddy sittin’ in this swing in nineteen and fifty one. My dad died in 1959, at 52. Mommy remarried but she never did have no more kids.”
Herman told us that the town fell on hard times after the Van Lear coal mine closed in 1948.
“This used to be a thriving town,” he said. “We had plenty of stores, even a stoplight.”
The family moved to Wabash, Indiana, in 1955. Loretta and her husband didn’t care for Indiana so they gravitated west to Washington State where she was discovered. Herman said he returned to Van Lear for good in 1975.
“I don’t know why,” he joked. “Guess I was just homesick.”
A cousin lived in the place into the 70s and Herman started fixing it up, so he could open it to the public in 1986. The house had no electricity or running water, and everyone had to use an outhouse out back when nature called.
“We didn’t have much money,” Herman said. “But neither did anyone else we knew and there was always something to eat.”
He said that they learned how to forage for edible plants and berries on hikes around the surrounding hills. Herman played in a band called the Country Nighthawks; he played the “git-TAR,” but was never able to quit his day job.
“We played a lot of gigs but I could never go too far, because I couldn’t quit my job and we needed the money,” he explained. “But I still play now and again.”
His sisters still come back to Butcher Hollow for visits, and he enjoys visiting with tourists who come to see the place, especially since his wife died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease seven years back.
“This old stove, tea kettle and cabinets here are all the original things we had,” Herman said, leading us through the tiny kitchen. “That churn behind you – I’ve churned buttermilk in that, beat butter, I’ve done it all.”
He showed us a moonshine container, his dad’s coal mining helmet and a host of other items and after showing us around the living room, took a seat on a couch. As much as I enjoyed seeing the house and this unique little forgotten corner of the country, the real treasure in visiting Butcher Hollow was having a chance to meet Herman, who seemed to be in no hurry to go home.
After a nice long chat, we said our goodbyes and on the way back out of town I saw a bumper sticker on a parked car down at the grocery shop that read, “Y’all Been to Butcher Hollow?” I’ve traveled all around the world in the last four decades but I can’t remember ever getting a richer, more authentic slice of a fast vanishing culture than what we experienced in this forgotten little hamlet in the hills of eastern Kentucky.
Hell yeah, I’ve been to Butcher Hollow and I plan to come back around someday too. Hope to see you there.
Welcome everyone to the first official day of Summer and, of course, your weekly dose of Hotel News We Noted, where we track the best, the most buzzy and the downright oddest news of the hospitality industry. As always, send us a note or leave a comment below if you have a timely tidbit.
Las Vegas, Now Easier to Visit Than Ever MGM Resorts in Las Vegas has really upped the ante with their loyalty program. The brand, which has more than 40,000 hotel rooms in Vegas across a dozen properties, has announced a new tie-in with Hyatt Gold Passport so that members can redeem their points at the brand’s properties in Las Vegas. This is on the heels of partnerships earlier this year with Southwest Airlines and Royal Caribbean cruises. Good news for savvy points hounds!
IHG Supports our Military with “Army Hotels”
It’s always nice to see a hotel brand giving back to our men and women in uniform. IHG is expanding their portfolio of Army Hotels, adding 18 more military installations to their portfolio, making more than 110,000 hotel rooms available on 39 military posts worldwide. The company also supports veterans through the , helping train veterans for hospitality careers, as well as the which donates “comfort homes” to families whose loved ones are being treated at far-away military medical centers, and (S2S) non-profit, a program that helps wounded service men and women overcome personal barriers.
Haute Hotel Suite: The Gwyneth Paltrow Penthouse
Stay at The Capri Palace Hotel & Spa and live like a movie star. That is, if you check into the hotel’s penthouse suite. Spanning 1,620 square feet on the top floor of the hotel, the penthouse combines Art Deco decor with historic elegance and features a special skylight above the bed as well as a separate rooftop garden that’s more than twice the size of the suite itself. The garden features a heated swimming pool with a panoramic view, enabling guests to admire the green slopes of Monte Solaro hill, the village of Anacapri, the islands of Ischia and Procida, as well as the enchanting bay of Naples. A smaller plunge pool is accessible from the second bedroom. We’re just wondering if organic food delivery comes standard with the room charge?
A Great Way to Celebrate Your Golden Anniversary
We love this fun hotel promo to celebrate the Waldorf Astoria property Rome Cavalieri. Check into the hotel at any point this month and five lucky guests will find that their room has been gift wrapped in gold embroidered linens. Those guests will find themselves upgraded to the hotel’s VIP Petronius or Penthouse Suite, both of which are furnished with incredible artwork (think original Andy Warhol pieces and a Karl Lagerfeld sofa) and impressive views. We’d love a Roman holiday, how about you?
On my first day in Venice I walked the streets without a camera in order to savor the beauties of this unparalleled city. I was leaving the next afternoon so that morning I got up at dawn in order to catch Venice at its abandoned best.
It’s a different city, more peaceful. You can linger on a bridge or take a shot from the middle of a street without getting trampled. You can capture the way the light plays on the water or on the side of an old, crumbling building without half a dozen heads getting into the shot.
Venice has a different character in those early hours. Instead of gondolas, cargo vessels ply the canals making deliveries to this city without cars. The streets are empty but for local workmen cleaning up or getting ready to open up their shops and kiosks. The only other tourists are lone photographers like me. My idea was a pretty obvious one, after all.
The low-angled light makes for some nice play between the tops of the buildings shining golden in the morning and the still-dark recesses of the alleyways and narrow canals. The low-angled light puts faded details into higher relief, like the faded Latin inscriptions on the lintels of church doors or the weathered escutcheons on Renaissance palaces.
%Slideshow-693%The early hours are also the time for visiting the big attractions. There’s something eerie about seeing the Piazza San Marco with only half a dozen people in it. One pair was a newlywed couple. A tuxedoed man was fiddling with the camera while his stunningly beautiful wife, decked out in her bridal gown, gave instructions and adjusted her veil. Beyond them the Grand Canal shimmered in the early light. I’m sure their wedding photo is the envy of their friends.
As stunning as these broad vistas are, Venice rewards a close look. There are details in the buildings and streets that make for great close-ups. In the Piazza San Marco, for example, you have this little bronze figure, one of a set.
At the corner of St. Mark’s Basilica is the square’s most historically important work of art, a porphyry statue of four armored men clinging to one another in mutual defense. I’ve wanted to see these little guys for years.
They’re the Tetrarchs. In 293 A.D., the Roman Emperor Diocletian decided the empire was too big and had too many enemies for one man to rule. He created the Tetrarchy, with an Emperor and a Caesar for both the West and the East. They were supposed to rule in harmony but of course the rivalry more often than not led to civil wars. In another century the Western Empire was a nonentity, while the Eastern Empire, known today as Byzantium, lived on until the 15th century. This famous statue originally stood in Constantinople but was stolen during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and brought here.
Many people photograph this statue, yet miss something even more interesting a few feet away. On a stone bench at the entrance to the basilica there’s a strange design scratched into the surface. It’s been almost worn away by centuries of bottoms, but you can make out a square within a square, partitioned into several segments. This was a Renaissance board game that people would play while whiling away the hours on the plaza. It’s a reminder of the regular folk who lived in Venice in the shadow of the great rulers, artists and priests.
This fired my imagination. Perhaps some other detail will fire yours: the dusty icons in an antique shop, the mosaic advertisement for a pension set into a street, the half-finished Renaissance fresco in the entryway of an obscure church. When you’re strolling around Venice or any great city, keep an eye out for those little details that catch your fancy as well as the grand views that everyone admires. That way you’ll end up with a photo album uniquely your own.
Pickled herring, drinking songs, a pole covered in flowers, boiled potatoes, dancing like frogs. Yes, that’s Swedish Midsommar (otherwise known as “Midsummer” in English).
Thanks to Swedish roots around the world and a general love of Scandinavian culture, the popular Swedish holiday – the sun was gone all winter, you would want to celebrate the longest day of the year too – is well known outside of the Nordic lands.
Not well versed on this Swedish celebration? First off, get the basics from this video by the Sweden.se:
Now, let’s get to the important part: celebrating. How are you going to get a Midsummer celebration going if you’re not in Sweden? Easy. Follow these simple steps.
Round up a few friends that like to eat and drink.
This will probably be your easiest task.
Find a long table.
Midsummer dinner tends to be served as a sit down meal complete with a nice tablecloth, napkins and real silverware. This is not your average American BBQ.
Make a midsummer pole.
If you don’t have the manpower to hoist up a long one, construct a smaller makeshift one.
Dance around said midsummer pole.
Dancing is a precursor to eating.
Track down some pickled herring.
It’s not Swedish Midsummer without it.
Serve Aquavit.
Again, you can’t call it Swedish Midsummer if you don’t have the classic drink.
Make a dessert that involves fresh berries.
Preferably strawberries and ideally in cake format.
Eat and drink late into the night/early morning.
The sun isn’t really going to ever set after all.
Just weeks before Pat Farmer was scheduled to depart for a 20,919-kilometer run from the North to the South Pole, his major sponsor pulled out and he was faced with a choice: give up his dream to be the first man to run Pole-to-Pole or sell everything he owned to finance the expedition. Farmer, a 51-year-old Aussie who jokes he’s been having mid-life crises since he ran his first ultra-marathon at age 18, decided to sell almost everything he owned – his house, his furniture, and most of his worldly possessions – in order to take a shot at his dream.
And then he ran. Farmer completed his Pole-to-Pole run in 10 months, averaging about 40 kilometers per day or 46 marathons a month, running through blistering heat, freezing cold and the impenetrable Darien Jungle. Along the way, he raised A$100,000 for Red Cross International. Now back in Australia a year after completing the run, Farmer is trying to get back on his feet financially, but says he has no regrets.
Farmer has been testing the limits of ultra-running for decades. Four years after his wife died unexpectedly at 30, leaving him to raise their two small children on his own, he ran around Australia and the resulting notoriety catapulted him into Australia’s parliament. But after nine years in politics, he got that familiar itch, the call to get back on the road.
We caught up with Farmer via Skype recently and, now back in Australia a year after completing the Pole-to-Pole run, and fresh off a run across the length of Vietnam, he is trying to get back on his feet financially. But says he has no regrets and continues to try to live memorably to justify why he’s alive and his wife is not.
What did you do before you became a Parliamentarian?
I was a professional runner. I’ve been an ultra-marathon runner since I was 18. In between that, I’ve done other things to make ends meet.
So how did you make the transition from athlete to Member of Parliament?
I left school when I was just 14, and worked as a mechanic in a garage near the route of a big race here in Australia, the Sydney to Melbourne ultra-marathon, which was made famous by Cliff Young, who won the race at the age of 63. It’s a 1,000-kilometer race. He went without sleep and won the race. Cliff became a folk hero here in Australia and I remember thinking to myself at the time, ‘I wish I could be something more than just a mechanic. I want to make something out of my life.’ With that in mind, I tried to qualify for the race. I tried and failed a few times but I finally qualified – it took me three years – and I competed in that race four times.
Then in 1991, when I was 22, I went to America and ran from Huntington Beach, California, to Central Park in New York in the Trans-America Footrace. I finished second. It took 54 days to cross the States.
Were you making a living from running?
I made some money from endorsements and there was a little prize money, but not much.
I completed in other races all around the world. I was asked to do a run around Australia in 2001 with the idea that I would link together all the states and territories of Australia with my footsteps – putting one foot in front of another to show Australians that this is a huge country, but if one man can link it together, imagine what we could all do if we worked together. I did that, it was 14,964 kilometers, and it took six months and 19 days. I got wonderful support and got a huge reception on the steps of Parliament in Canberra.
The Prime Minister at that time, John Howard, welcomed me at the finish. I got a call from him about a month later and he said he was impressed with my community-mindedness and how I was received around the country. He said, ‘Look, I don’t know what side of politics you are on but if you’re interested in getting involved in politics, I promise you my support.’
I took the opportunity and moved into politics. I became a Junior Minister for Education, Science and Training, a Shadow Minister for Sport & Youth, and I held those positions for about 9 years while I was in politics. Then I got out of it and did the Pole-to-Pole Run.
You quit politics to do the run?
When I ran around Australia, I was originally planning to do a run starting in England and going to all the countries where most immigrants moved to Australia from. As it turned out, it was too expensive. But the whole time I was in politics I felt like I had some unfinished business with my running. That’s what prompted me to kick off the Pole-to-Pole run; to do something that no one had ever done before.
Tell me about your family.
I was married but my wife died when my kids were very little. My son, Dylan, was 10 months old, and my daughter, Brooke, was 2 years old at the time. My wife had Mitral Valve Prolapse, which meant that the valve in her heart just popped out one day and she died completely out of the blue at age 30. So I raised my two children on my own since that time and still do. My daughter is 18 now and is at the university. My son, Dylan, is in high school. But the whole country has gotten to know my children because I’ve dragged them all over the world competing in races.
So they stayed in Australia while you ran Pole-to-Pole?
They did, but Women’s Weekly, one of our magazines here, flew Dylan out to meet me after I came off the ice on the North Pole and touched Canadian soil on Ward Hunt Island. It was a surprise; he came off a plane and wrapped his arms around me. It was quite an emotional moment.
Has anyone else attempted to run Pole-to-Pole?
No. There aren’t many challenges left in this world where you can be the first. It was a matter of taking on the longest possible run I could. People have run across the equator, but they are more or less island hopping – not running continuously. I wanted to run every day. So I had to get on a plane and fly from Ushuaia at the bottom of South America to the South Pole region, but it was only a five-hour flight and I got off the plane and started running.
How much did it cost to finance this expedition?
It was about $2.4 million dollars, most of that financed by myself. One of my sponsors pulled out at the last moment. I was supposed to go from the South Pole to the North Pole and I had about 15 months to do it, so I felt it was quite achievable. When my sponsor pulled out, I’d already paid deposits for the Russians to fly me into the South and North Poles and I’d already paid for a lot of crew support, so I had to decide whether to ditch the whole thing or try again the next year. I felt like if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. I ran out of time to do the South Pole first, because you have a short weather window for that.
So I had to reverse it and start with the North Pole and complete the whole thing in only ten months. It was a race against time to make it to the South Pole. I found one major sponsor – Channel 9 here in Australia and some minor sponsors, but I was still short by a lot of money. I sold my house in Sydney, sold my furniture, paintings, everything I had. My children were in boarding school, so that was fine. We rented a unit so that my children would have a base to go to on the weekends and I sunk the rest of the money into the run. I sold most of my belongings so I had to start from scratch again when I got home.
Did people say you were crazy?
It’s gone beyond the crazy stage. It’s this burning desire to get back to basics. To move away from the computer and out of the office; to experience life and walk the path that no one has walked before. Guys will go through a mid-life crisis. They use to buy red Porsche but now it’s different. They’re looking for more from life. So people get into these adventures – they want to climb mountains, or hike in exotic locations or go trekking through jungles or forests or run in ultra-marathons.
For guys, in particular, it’s a burning desire to rediscover themselves and prove to the world that they’re not done living yet.
So was your Pole Run the result of a mid-life crisis or not?
For me, I’ve been like this since I was 18, so I suppose I’ve been having mid-life crises since I was a teenager! The fact that I’m still on this planet makes me feel that I have a destiny to fulfill. I don’t know what that destiny is, but every time an opportunity presents itself, I figure, maybe this is what I’m supposed to do with my life. So I accept the challenge and then go off and do it. Life is full of adventure and bends in the road – you either take them or you live on regrets.
Stage 1 of your expedition was a 760-kilometer trek across the ice of the Arctic. How does one get to the North Pole?
The Russians are the experts at taking people into the Arctic and the Antarctic. If you have enough money, you can buy half the Russian army. I flew from Australia to New York. I trained in New York dragging tires around Central Park for six weeks. I needed to get used to dragging a sled in the Arctic, so I would drag my truck tires from the apartment I was staying in on 118th Street in Harlem down through Central Park, and I would do four laps around the park each day. That’s just under a marathon.
From New York, I flew to California where I picked up my support vehicles – two Winnebago vans – met my crew and we drove up to Vancouver. From there, we flew up to Norway and drove up to Longyearbyen, a tiny island, north of Norway that Norwegians go to for holidays. There are polar bears and a little village that looks like something out of a Hans Christian Anderson novel. From there, they flew me in a Russian truck carrier plane into the Arctic Circle, where they have a base. We landed on an airstrip about 160 miles from the North Pole itself, and from there we went by helicopter to the North Pole itself and that’s where we started the expedition.
There were four of us on this phase of the expedition. We all had to drag our own sleds, set up our tents each night and so on. The sleds had our food, our tents, our spare clothing and fuel from our burners, rifles, in case we came across polar bears, and our ice axes and boots and snowshoes.
It was a 40-day trek across the Arctic? What was a typical day like?
It was 39 days from the North Pole to the Canadian shoreline. A typical day we would be on the ice for 12 hours per day. The temperatures got down to about minus 40. We had 100-kilometer winds, total whiteouts. Often there were days when you couldn’t see which way was up, which way was down and the snow was blowing right in our faces.
The Arctic Circle is like an ice cube that floats on the ocean. If you get a warm current that comes through, the ice cracks, so you have to decide to jump across, as the ice cracks apart, or you’re left stranded on one side and you have to put on a dry suit, zip it up, grab two ice axes and tie a Kevlar rope around your waist and swim to the other side. And you have to drag your sled across. The sled is like a cut down plastic kayak.
How cold was it in the tent at night?
It’s 24 hours of daylight so it’s hard to sleep. I’d go to sleep with my clothing still covered in ice. There was no way I could get it all off; it’s too cold. The only bit of comfort was inside my sleeping bag, and that was only after about an hour of being in there when you start to warm up again. It was miserable. There is nothing more horrendous than the North Pole region. The South Pole was a piece of cake by comparison. The South Pole is a solid mass of land with snow and ice on top of it. It gets cold down there but you don’t have to worry about Polar bears or falling through the ice.
Did you run throughout this expedition or did you walk at times?
In the South Pole, I put on my Baffin boots and just ran. In the North Pole, I had those on, plus snowshoes.
So it took you 39 days to make it to Ward Hunt Island in Canada and then you were airlifted to Radisson, Quebec, where there’s a road?
That’s correct. It’s the northernmost road on the eastern side of Canada. We ended up running through 14 countries from there. Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, through the Darien Gap, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
Stage 2 was an 11,744-kilometer road run through North and Central America and then Stage 3 of your expedition was a 250-kilometer trek through the Darien Jungle? How long did that take?
It took five days. I had 14-armed soldiers from Colombia and Panama assigned to me.
Has anyone run through the Darien Jungle before?
No. It’s a dangerous place. My crew wasn’t allowed in. The soldiers had machine guns and sniper rifles. We bushwhacked our way through it with machetes. There are a lot of drug runners holed up there. It’s a trade route to smuggle drugs up through Central America and into the United States.
When we got to Colombia, some of the soldiers broke down in tears. They were really moved by the experience we had, and it highlighted for me what we achieved on the run. It wasn’t just about one person running. It was about changing people’s attitudes toward life itself. It was about inspiring people to see what they could do with their own lives.
I had people travel long distances just to run with me for half a day or sometimes less. I met people who traveled long distances just to share part of my run with me, for maybe 10 or 20 miles.
After you made it through the jungle, you ran 9,693 kilometers through South America. How did that leg compare to the North America leg of your run?
North America was a Godsend. In the Arctic Circle, I was surviving on olive oil, butter and dry noodles for the most part. Our food intake was minimal because we could only take what we could carry. I weighed 65 kg (143 lbs.) but dropped to 49 kg (108 lbs) by the time we got to Canada. I was nothing but skin and bones.
But there was plenty of good food and shops all through North America, and I had my support crew, so instead of sleeping on the ice, I was sleeping in the Winnebago. In South America, there were longer distances where we weren’t close to stores and places to eat.
Did you take any days off on this run?
No. I read about people who ran around the world but took breaks to go home or nurse injuries and I just didn’t think that wasn’t the same challenge. The challenge is you start something and you don’t stop until you finish. And I couldn’t take breaks because it was a race against time. There is only a certain window of opportunity to get to the South Pole and once you lose that, no one will fly you down there.
I was on tenterhooks the whole run. Because what’s the point of starting something like this if you can’t finish it? There was one day in Mexico where I ran 140 kilometers in a 24-hour period. I ran about 90 kilometers a day all through Colombia to try to make up some time.
How many kilometers did you average per day?
The average was 65 kilometers per day with no days off. I covered 20,900 kilometers. It was much higher than that on the mainland but the North Pole pulled the averages back. We had one day in the North Pole when Jose, my cameraman, fell through the ice and we only did 5 kilometers for the day and he nearly died but managed to recover.
How did your body hold up on the run?
My feet weren’t too bad. My fingers ached continuously at the poles; they were so cold they felt like they were on fire. I thought for sure I would lose some fingers, but I survived.
What was the weather like at the South Pole?
It was minus 30, minus 35 and we had a few days with whiteouts, but I did that leg – 900 kilometers – in just 20 days. It was much easier than the North Pole because it’s solid ground underneath the ice, and I didn’t have to drag a sled. My support crew was on Skidoos.
How did you know when you’d reached the South Pole and what did you do when you got there?
There’s two things down there: the geographical South Pole, which changes slightly every few years and the old barber shop South Pole set up by the early explorers. It’s a little village. Unlike the North Pole, there are some buildings. It’s more stable than the North Pole, which is moving all the time. There’s a U.S. science base at the South Pole and a lot of the scientists were following my journey so they came out to cheer me on at the finish. There are some researchers living there and when I was there, there were about 20 explorers there as well.
What did you do the night you finished the expedition?
I slept for starters. My hands were swollen very badly, so I had to see a nurse there. They took my gloves and boots off and immersed them in some hot water to bring down the swelling. I ate some decent food, which was a relief after eating rations for so long.
So you came back to Australia and had no home. You had to start fresh?
Yes. I’m renting a small home at the moment. I’m gradually trying to get back on my feet financially, but it’s taking a while to get back to where we were. But I have no regrets. You can always have a house and a car. But very few people will get to see the places I’ve seen, meet the people I’ve met and change people’s lives like we did during the run.
Did the proceeds of the book help to offset your expedition costs?
I’m yet to see any royalties from the book. I hope things will come in time. It will be a long time before I can recoup the expenses of the event itself. The North Pole alone costs $500,000; the South Pole was similar, and then there were all the expenses in between.
How much of this did you pay for from your own savings?
About 50 percent.
What other challenges do you have in mind?
I just recently completed a run through Vietnam. It’s only 3,000 kilometers from the border with China to the tip of the country. It took about six weeks. It was the 40th anniversary of the end of the war. I did that run and was supported by a lot of Vietnamese runners.
Other than speaking engagements, what are you doing now?
I don’t think I’ll go back into politics, but we have an election coming up here later this year, so I’m helping a few of my former colleagues with that. I want to continue to help Red Cross with their disaster relief projects. For me, it’s not about money; it’s about having a purpose in my life. It’s important for me to look back on my life and see that I did something worthwhile.
My wife died when she was too young. Every single day of my life I try to justify why I’m still on this planet and she’s not. I try to make my life count for something. People say to me, “You could make money off of this,” or “You haven’t got any money.” That stuff doesn’t matter to me. So long as I can put a roof over our heads and food on the table, that’s enough.