Oskar Speck's 1932 Kayak Journey From Germany to Australia
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The story of Oskar Speck's 1932 kayak journey from Germany to Australia is shared, with commenters expressing fascination and amazement at his incredible feat, while also raising questions about the risks he faced.
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- 01Story posted
Oct 10, 2025 at 11:08 PM EDT
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Oct 20, 2025 at 1:21 AM EDT
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Oct 20, 2025 at 6:07 AM EDT
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ID: 45546250Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:30:03 PM
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His route: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Speck-ma...
Photograph of him at the Timor coast: https://cdn.mopo.de/uploads/sites/4/2024/04/farbe-oskar-spec...
This seems to be a photograph taken after his arrest: https://lovedaylives.com/app/uploads/2021/03/SPECK-2.jpg
According to the German Wikipedia, he had a small electrical company which went bankrupt during the Great Depression. His original plan was to "only" paddle to Cyprus to work in a copper mine.
Indeed, looking at the map of his route, the longest distance he had to actually travel on open sea seems to be around 120 km from the Kei islands to Papua New Guinea [0], which is (at least for me) completely counter-intuitive for a Kayak voyage from Ulm to Australia.
[0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/-4.661/133.234