Peter Bland’s lifelong urge to walk the thin line between adventure and catastrophe has led him to the ends of the earth and forced him to test the limits of his own body.
In 1998 the 35-year-old fulfilled his lifetime ambition, becoming the first Australian ever to walk to the North Magnetic Pole and the only one to have adventured to both the North and South Magnetic Poles. What makes Peter Blands’s accomplishment even more remarkable is that he completed his expedition to the North Magnetic Pole, hauling a sled 700km across the frozen Arctic Sea, 12 months after undergoing his second bout of major heart surgery. Despite these obvious setbacks, Peter's determination and vision enabled him to overcome the odds and reach the North Magnetic Pole while raising funds for the National Heart Foundation. Peter Bland is now the National Ambassador for National Heart Foundation.
But Peter Bland had yet to face his biggest challenge. In 2000 he and a childhood friend, Jay Watson, set out on the world’s first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic Peninsula, a stretch of craggy mountains, glaciers and ice-filled bays aptly-named the “Great White Chaos.” They had no dogs, no vehicles, no doctors – just them and the ice for hundreds of miles.
On the last day of their journey, disaster struck. An avalanche dragged Peter down an ice face and plunged him into a 50metre, 14-story deep crevasse. His pelvis was crushed, all his ribs were broken, his skull fractured and he was bleeding from the nose, ear and mouth when Jay found him. Jay lay on him at the bottom of the crevasse for three days to give him body heat to live until rescuers arrived. Peter suffered severe brain trauma and needed a year of speech therapy, physiotherapy and ongoing medical attention before he could function normally again. "The greatest journey I've ever taken is from that crevasse to get back on the stage being able to talk professionally to the public again. I had to reinvent myself."
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A step too far- Peter Bland and the obsession with adventure
Peter Bland?s life has always been about overcoming challenges and taking that extra step, but sometimes it?s been a step too far. Like the time he stepped from his tent during an unsupported crossing of the Antarctic peninsula and was swept away by an avalanche, ending up unconscious and near death 40 metres down a crevasse. Or the time he dived under a stricken yacht adrift among icebergs in the Southern Ocean on a voyage to the South Magnetic Pole ? without a wet suit and with the external air temperature minus 60 degrees Celsius ? in order to free a rope that was wrapped around the propeller. Or how after major heart surgery to repair a massive aneurysm he dragged a sled 650 kilometres to become the first Australian to reach both magnetic poles |
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