Solo Kayaking the Blackwood River for Mental Health

Every day in WA there are special people doing special things and sometimes I get to talk to one of them.

Anthony Moulton is with me.

Good morning, Anthony.

Hi, how are you doing?

Yeah, I'm doing well.

I'm very excited to talk to you, to get into this.

The headline is, you're doing something you're calling the Blackwood River 10.

You're solo kayaking the Blackwood River, 314 kilometres from Boyart Brook to Augusta.

We'll get into the details of that and the challenge that it's going to be, but first, Anthony, can you tell me, because you're partnering with Rural Aid for this, so I have to start by asking, why are you taking on this kayaking challenge? Can you tell me your story?

Yeah, yeah, no problem Holly.

So I had suffered an injury a few years ago and it really changed my life sort of personally and I was lost for direction.

It really took away a lot of my abilities and skills that I had at the time and one of those things was I used to kayak in the ocean a lot.

I used to do a lot of fishing from a kayak and because of the injury I wasn't able to do that anymore and support network and therapists, et cetera, recommended that I continue doing life as I used to.

I found the Blackwood River.

It didn't judge me whatsoever.

It didn't look at me sort of abnormally because of this different appearance that I had.

The only thing that it wanted from me was its full presence because if I didn't give it to it, it would really let me know when You know, I'm not sure what sort of ways.

So because I couldn't use my dominant arm anymore, my only option was to use a Hobie kayak, the pedal kayaks.

That's when I thought, oh, it would be nice to do really long distance.

And then I thought, you know what, as a personal challenge, I'm going to try and do the whole lot.

And I thought about my own experience and that was challenging mental health, especially through the injury and the rehabilitation process.

And I thought, well, I'd love to help men similar to myself because I know that we have this stigma about mental health.

So that was the adaption, I guess, to the Blackwood River 10.

I thought, oh, I would like to help 10 people similar to me.

And from my experiences, I knew Medicare and the mental health care plans are great.

Every day in WA there are special people doing special things and sometimes I get to talk to one of them.

Anthony Moulton is with me.

Good morning, Anthony.

Hi, how are you doing?

Yeah, I'm doing well.

I'm very excited to talk to you, to get into this.

The headline is, you're doing something you're calling the Blackwood River 10.

You're solo kayaking the Blackwood River, 314 kilometres from Boyart Brook to Augusta.

We'll get into the details of that and the challenge that it's going to be, but first, Anthony, can you tell me, because you're partnering with Rural Aid for this, so I have to start by asking, why are you taking on this kayaking challenge? Can you tell me your story?

Yeah, yeah, no problem Holly.

So I had suffered an injury a few years ago and it really changed my life sort of personally and I was lost for direction.

It really took away a lot of my abilities and skills that I had at the time and one of those things was I used to kayak in the ocean a lot.

I used to do a lot of fishing from a kayak and because of the injury I wasn't able to do that anymore and support network and therapists, et cetera, recommended that I continue doing life as I used to.

I found the Blackwood River.

It didn't judge me whatsoever.

It didn't look at me sort of abnormally because of this different appearance that I had.

The only thing that it wanted from me was its full presence because if I didn't give it to it, it would really let me know when You know, I'm not sure what sort of ways.

So because I couldn't use my dominant arm anymore, my only option was to use a Hobie kayak, the pedal kayaks.

That's when I thought, oh, it would be nice to do really long distance.

And then I thought, you know what, as a personal challenge, I'm going to try and do the whole lot.

And I thought about my own experience and that was challenging mental health, especially through the injury and the rehabilitation process.

And I thought, well, I'd love to help men similar to myself because I know that we have this stigma about mental health.

So that was the adaption, I guess, to the Blackwood River 10.

I thought, oh, I would like to help 10 people similar to me.

And from my experiences, I knew Medicare and the mental health care plans are great.