Fearless Femmes
What qualities must a woman possess to make it in the world of adventure? Is it all about bulging biceps, hairy armpits and a desire to conquer, or do feminine wiles have a place in the wild outdoors? WORDS: Emma Francis
The other day, I finally plucked up the courage to take myself surfing. Yep, completely solo; no boyfriend to point out the rips and reefs. Just me, the ocean, and about 20 blokes all vying for the wave of the day.
Yes, I was intimidated. Yes, I felt out of my depth, splashing in a sea of testosterone. But I was going for a surf, goddamn it, and no preconceived notions of gender were going to stop me.
After successfully negotiating the impact zone and making it out the back, I was feeling pretty chuffed; so far so good. Then a briny dude, who looked like he’d spent the better portion of his life in the drink, cruised by on a stand-up paddleboard (SUP) and took it upon himself to appraise my paddling technique from his lofty position.
“You’re lying too far back on your board,” he offered, without invitation.
I promptly wriggled forward.
“Now you’re too far forward – move back a few inches.”
I wriggled back.
“Nah, you’re too far back again – you want your chest to be right over the pink hibiscus.”
Suddenly, my blatantly feminine surfboard, replete with pastels and petals, seemed incredibly lame.
“Oh, I don’t really have a clue what I’m doing out here,” I giggled, surrendering all my hard-earned experience, knowledge and common sense to this oracle of surfing wisdom.
“You’ll get there, babe.”
And with that, my self-confidence abandoned me. It promptly retreated back to the beach to sulk between the flags. “Stick to yoga and boxercise,” it sneered. “This is no place for a girl.”
In offices, boardrooms and bedrooms across Australia, women may be forgiven for thinking they can have it all. Feminism has come so far it’s almost redundant, and girls are building empires, burping babies and gyrating to Lady Gaga in equal measure.
But outside, on the oceans, mountain peaks and polar ice caps – where brawn and bravery rule the day – it is still very much a man’s world. For a woman to make her mark in adventure she needs rare qualities; she needs to abandon her female proclivities and think like a man. She needs to be totally devoid of fear, and have self-confidence on tap. In short, she needs balls.
NOT NECESSARILY, SAYS LEGENDARY Australian mountaineer, Brigitte Muir. Despite having romped through some of Mother Nature’s most fearsome playgrounds, the Belgian-born adventurer from Natimuk in country Victoria, is well acquainted with the demons of self-doubt, and insists they can be a woman’s best friend when properly harnessed.
“I think it’s very natural for women to lack self-confidence, not to believe in themselves, and always think that the person next door is much more experienced,” she sympathises, after listening to my sad surfing tale. “It’s something that affects us from our teenage years on, and I’ve often felt it myself.
“But it’s how we use those fears and doubts to our advantage that matters, and I haven’t let them stop me from putting myself on the line and taking on things that many people may think are not possible.”
As far as adventure cred goes, Brigitte is in a class of her own. In 1997 she became the first Australian woman to summit Mount Everest, and the first Australian to summit the highest peak on each continent – a ‘Seven Summits’ odyssey that took her nine years to achieve. Today she uses her leadership and motivational skills to serve and inspire others, leading treks for World Expeditions, making documentaries, and running her own charity to help improve literacy among the Nepalese women she now considers family.
Anyone reading Brigitte’s dizzying CV could be forgiven for thinking she hails from an established mountaineering pedigree. But, far from it, the 52-year-old describes herself as the black sheep of the family, and attributes her intrepid spirit to Tin Tin comics and a tomboyish disposition.
“I actually lived in a very industrial valley, with factories everywhere, so for a long time, the great outdoors was a bit of an unknown for me,” she says. “Then I met a girl at school who was into caving, and she was always coming back into class with bruises and scratches. I thought, ‘Oh, what’s that all about?’ and decided to find out for myself.”
Brigitte describes her introduction to caving as a “revelation”, and despite some heated debates with her mother about the proper conduct of young ladies, she was soon acquiring an impressive collection of bruises and scratches to call her own.
But it’s a steep ascent from the caves of Belgium to the summit of Everest, and it would take more than just a sense of adventure to see Brigitte achieve her lofty goals, especially in the male-dominated domain of mountaineering, where physical strength and an all-conquering attitude are often seen as essential attributes.
But it was that very ‘boy’s club’ mentality that ignited Brigitte’s Seven Summits ambition. In 1988, Brigitte’s then husband, legendary adventurer Jon Muir, was invited on a bicentennial expedition to Mount Everest, but Brigitte, who’d been leading expeditions in the Himalaya for several years, wasn’t.
“That really annoyed me,” she says. “I thought, ‘Right, if you’re going to Everest, then I’m going to climb the highest summit on each continent, so there.’ That’s how it started, really, as a dare.”
Asked whether or not she compared herself to Jon during their years of trekking together, and whether or not those comparisons undermined her confidence as a mountaineer, Brigitte is disarmingly frank.
“Well, we’re not married anymore!” she laughs. “It’s hard to live with a hero, basically, and jealousy and competition can come into it. But that doesn’t mean it can’t work.
“I’ve got girlfriends who are trying all sorts of different things and they sometimes get a bit annoyed because their husbands are stronger than they are. But that doesn’t mean we can’t push ourselves and achieve in these traditionally male-dominated fields. We just need to utilise our strengths and do it in different ways.”
WOMEN POSSESS MANY INTRINSIC TRAITS that set them up for success in the wilderness, says Diane Westaway, founder of women-only expedition company, Wild Women on Top. She has spent the last 10 years observing the unique ways in which women approach adventure, and has some very firm opinions about how gender plays out in the great outdoors.
“I recently went from a very remote trek in Nepal with 18 women, to a mixed trek up Everest led by men, and the contrast between the two experiences couldn’t have been more stark,” she says. “The women were very much team-oriented and really looked after each other, whereas on the Everest trek, there wasn’t any sense of team, from my point of view.
“Basically, I think the male psyche is much more ego-driven and goal-focused, whereas achieving the goal together, with everyone happy and healthy, is the key thing for women.”
According to Diane, the women who seek out her treks place good food, breathtaking views and forging new friendships ahead of blazing trails and breaking records.
“I think that’s a very female thing. Women are looking for those magic moments and want to take the time to absorb them,” she says. “I also think that women, as natural communicators, want to share their experiences with friends, and are much less inclined to go off and do things on their own. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons female solo adventurers are such a rare breed – they have something very specific to prove to themselves, whereas most women don’t think like that at all.”
Nevertheless, once in a while, what starts out as some fun with the girls can stir greater ambitions.
At 50, Linda Beilharz, is the newest inductee into Australasia’s trekking hall of fame, having, in May this year, become the first Australian woman to walk (assisted) to both the North and South Poles. She has also crossed the Greenland Icecap, and now has the Patagonian Icecap firmly in her sights to complete the quadrella.
The humble Bendigo mum insists her expeditions were never intended as world firsts, but evolved naturally from her love of frozen landscapes.
“I have a group of female friends with whom I’ve done a walk every year for the last 12 years,” she explains. “Within that group, two of my strengths ended up being navigation and leadership, and I think doing that with those women friends is what gave me the confidence to do the bigger things.”
A series of mountaineering courses in Australia, New Zealand and Canada helped consolidate Linda’s passion and skills, and before she knew it, her ‘Four Icecaps’ mission had reached critical momentum – there was no turning back.
“To be honest, I never dreamt I could do anything like the things I’ve done. I had kids when I was 21, and then I was after a career, so adventure was secondary,” she says. “But once I had the time, and started taking those small steps to build up my skills, I realised it was possible.”
Linda says she owes a lot of her confidence to a book called To the Pole. Written by British adventurer Caroline Hamilton, it tells the story of five British women who, in 2000, became the first all-woman group to reach the South Pole. Linda says the humour and disarmingly honest language used by Hamilton helped demystify the task ?at hand.
“The way she wrote about their story was a bit different to what you read from men, which is far more about defying death,” she says. “They also didn’t set themselves up as experts – they set themselves up as ordinary women simply doing something they wanted to do. And that made Antarctica seem do-able.”
However, according to Linda, such positive messages about women in the outdoors are few and far between in a media obsessed with stereotypes. She believes many women underestimate their abilities, not because they lack physical or mental strength, but because they lack role models.
“Most of the messages that society gives us are not about women in the outdoors,” she says. “The media doesn’t value women being physical, and I guess we don’t feature much in terms of adventure because we don’t fit the categories that they’re interested in, which are mostly to do with sex appeal.”
“I also think there is a more insidious thought process at play - that if a woman can do something, it must be less difficult to do, and perhaps that’s why our achievements aren’t as valued.”
Try telling that to kiteboarding extraordinaire, Natalie Clarke. In March this year, the Melburnian became the first person in the world to kiteboard solo across the notoriously treacherous Bass Strait, in the process smashing the record previously set by a pair of fellas, Victorian friends Ben Morrison-Jack and James Weight.
“I haven’t heard anyone say they think they might go and try it now that a woman has done it!” she laughs. “In fact, I think it’s more of an achievement if a woman has done something, not because we are the weaker sex, but because it’s not accepted for us to put our lives on hold to pursue a dream. If a woman can fit her dream into her life, now that’s an achievement.”
Natalie is unique among women adventurers in that she fits her derring-do around work and motherhood. While many women pursue adventure later in life, when work and family commitments no longer demand their undivided attention (or, indeed forgo traditional child-rearing roles altogether), the 36-year-old is living proof that women can pursue their personal adventure goals and still be good mums and wives.
It just takes oodles of preparation, and a very patient husband, says Natalie.
“Time to prepare for the mission was a huge issue,” she explains. “I think guys can get away with letting family take a back seat for a big event, but it’s much harder for women. A mum is still expected to make sure the kids have had breakfast before they go to school, pack their lunch, collect them from school, arrange their after-school activities, know who their friends are and what they want for birthday presents.
“I was lucky that my kids understood my passion for kiteboarding, and that I have a husband who is willing to look after the kids on weekends and do stuff around the house, but it’s still difficult to fit everything in around a life-risking adventure.”
Indeed, according to Natalie, the preparation for the crossing was almost more taxing than the actual journey.
“When asked what I was going to do for up to 15 hours kiting across Bass Strait, I joked that it would be 15 hours of peace where I wouldn’t be required to do anything,” she laughs. “No one expects you to make school pick-up the day you’re setting a new world record!”
So how exactly did she manage to fit it all in? Natalie says her secret was to not over think things, and do her best to ignore the naysayers.
“People would always ask me what I was doing to keep fit and how many gym sessions I was doing a week, and I when I told them that I kited whenever I could, swam with my squad sometimes, and scooted with my kids to school, they’d look at me like, ‘What makes you think you can do this?’”
Like Linda, Natalie’s world record attempt wasn’t borne of any burning ambition to be number one. Rather, her intentions were far more altruistic – she simply saw it as a great opportunity to raise awareness and money for her charitable foundation, Swim 4 All, which teaches autistic and special needs children how to swim.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the desire to encourage and nurture others is a common theme among elite women adventurers, who often feel compelled to “give back” after undertaking such profoundly life-altering experiences.
“Setting a record certainly helps justify the expenditure, but if you did it just for that I think it would be empty,” says Linda, who is one of the founders of Journeys for Learning, a not-for-profit organisation that works with schools, community groups and workplaces to teach teamwork, resilience and environmental sustainability through the stories of adventurers.
“For me, being in the outdoors is about an appreciation of the environment,” she says. “I think that, unless we get people out in the bush, we become distant from it and don’t understand our connection to the natural landscape.”
And that’s a sentiment all four women share: that, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much if we’re not setting records or defying death, so long as we’re paddling out the back, soaking up the landscape and enjoying the moment – briny dudes notwithstanding.
Check out Outer Edge’s list of Top Twelve Female Adventrers in the latest edition on shelves now.
