With Every Step Read online

  Published by Nero,

  an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

  37–39 Langridge Street

  Collingwood VIC 3066, Australia

  email: [email protected]

  www.nerobooks.com.au

  Copyright © Neil Cadigan 2015

  Neil Cadigan asserts his right to be known as the author of this work.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Cadigan, Neil, author.

  With every step: a son’s quest and a father’s promise / Neil Cadigan.

  9781863957106 (paperback)

  9781922231789 (ebook)

  Cadigan, Andrew. Simpson, Chris. Fundraising—Australia.

  Leukemia—Research—Australia.

  361.70681

  Cover and internal design by Peter Long

  Cover photograph by Rik Gruwez

  To Andrew (‘Cad’), and the indelible mark you left on so many.

  To my family.

  And to all those people who have lost a son or daughter too early.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Prologue: Happy Finish, Tragic Ending

  1. Cad

  2. The Promise He Had to Keep

  3. Off and Walking

  4. A Painful Return to His Birthplace

  5. Melbourne to Ceduna

  6. The Nullarbor

  7. No Winter Wonderland

  8. Simmo Joins the Party

  9. Broome or Bust

  10. The Killer Kimberley

  11. Counting Down to Christmas

  12. Rested and Homeward Bound

  13. Sixth State, Fifteenth Highway

  14. The Sprint Home

  15. The Split-Second that Changed Everything

  16. Trapped in Thailand

  17. Home … and the End

  Epilogue: We Live in Deed

  Whatever Makes You Happy

  FOREWORD

  My son, Andrew ‘Cad’ Cadigan, was an ordinary Australian, known mostly to those outside his many friends and his family for being the third person to have walked solo around Australia, although he was the only one of these to have added Tasmania to the mainland states and territories. From late December 2010 to mid-June 2012 he paced just over 15,000 kilometres, averaging 43 kilometres per walking day (and an incredible 53 kilometres a day from Darwin to Sydney).

  He did it in honour of a mate, Chris ‘Simmo’ Simpson, who had died seven months before Andrew’s departure, age twenty-four, from complications associated with a disease called myelodysplasia, a rare pre-leukaemia condition. Cad relinquished his job as a carpenter/site manager and left with little preparation and no sponsorship, intending to fund his trek through the pending sale of his home. After deciding to dedicate the walk to Simmo, Cad elected to raise funds for causes related to Simmo’s plight – firstly the Cancer Council of New South Wales, then the Leukaemia Foundation – and in the end raised around $65,000. He rarely accepted any donations towards his own costs.

  Cad was endeared to thousands via brief meetings along his route or the almost daily video blogs he posted on his website and YouTube. Yet the sixteen months it took him to complete the course, including two months in Thailand to sit out the most torrential period of the monsoon season in Australia’s Top End, had taken much more out of him than he articulated through his often witty blogs.

  The way Cad withstood temperatures of over 40 degrees to walk more than 50 kilometres a day during the start of Australia’s big wet was amazing, as was his crossing of the Nullarbor Plain.

  Just four days after completing his walk, armed with the twenty-six handwritten exercise books that contained his daily diaries, Andrew left for Thailand. His aim was both to recover and to remove himself from potential distractions so he could write a book on his experiences, with my help. The idea originated in a book he’d read years earlier: Giant Steps, written by a former British paratrooper named Karl Bushby, who had attempted to walk from the southern point of South America to England.

  Tragically, Andrew was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in Thailand one month to the day after he completed his walk. He died twelve weeks later, after being returned to Australia.

  At the start of the ten horrible weeks that my wife, Chris, and I spent in Thailand as Cad’s condition swayed between probable death and a terrible life of permanent care, I vowed that I would write the book he was no longer capable of completing.

  This is my fifteenth book, most of the rest having been as a ghostwriter for the autobiographies of others. It was by far the toughest to write. Yet for obvious reasons it is the dearest to me. It became a way for me to pay tribute to Cad, an ordinary bloke who proved to have something extraordinary in him.

  Sadly, I only became aware of some exceptional aspects of Cad after his death, partly from the remarkable eulogies articulated by his closest mates (including a moving video tribute they put together for his funeral), but also from the many hundreds of people he met during his venture. These meetings were brief, but long enough for Cad to leave an indelible mark on these strangers. To them, his Oz On Foot trek defined him. To those who knew Cad well beforehand, it typified him.

  As I sat at my desk compiling this book, often early in the morning or late at night, I felt like I was in my own cocoon, shut away even from Chris, whom I love dearly. I was writing these thousands of words as a memoir intended only for my family and Cad’s closest friends. It was my way of telling them the complete story of his incredible walk, and of the terrible aftermath in Thailand right to his death back home. It was also, for me, a means of answering the many questions I couldn’t answer to their faces – a way I could spit out all that was inside me, but having to tell it only once to a computer screen, and not continually to people in person.

  Cad’s incredible trek was made not just on the lonely highways across barren land, but also emotionally through the hundreds of pages of diary notes he recorded on his travels, and the many, many hours he had to himself to think about his life. It was new territory for him to document his inner thoughts as well as his daily experiences. His journals comprised some 450,000 words; much of it had to be condensed, and some was kept private.

  This book contains many direct quotations from Cad’s personal chronicles, in his unique and memorable voice. I removed an abundance of swear words but have retained some for the right emphasis, and I’ve occasionally made corrections for clarity and consistency.

  Of course, the ending of the book is very different to what Cad and I had planned. Yet I felt I had to detail his terrible fate after the accident, both in order to truly complete his story and to give a loving father’s narrative of a situation too many people have been confronted with.

  My account of the very difficult months between Cad’s accident and his death were largely written while Chris and I were in Thailand. I kept my own diary notes, which were the only means by which I could record and come to terms with what happened in those surreal, difficult weeks, as we endured the nightmare no parent wants to live. I often wrote as I sat by his hospital bed or in our hotel, which had been his. I had to get my thoughts and feelings out while they were raw, real and current, as I knew I would not be able to go there again. It was then that I also began reading Cad’s handwritten diaries.

  My hope for this book is that it is an interesting and inspirational insight into one man’s unbelievable achievement in walking around a continent, often in harsh conditions. The ending of Cad’s life was tragic
, coming so painfully soon after his great conquest. Yet I am thankful that we had Andrew for thirty-one years, during which time he enriched our lives.

  I do not want to suggest Cad was an angel without faults, vices or regrets – he did not always live his life as I had hoped he would, nor was he always the happy-go-lucky soul he often appeared. However, he had a most amazing inner strength and determination, an incredible threshold for pain, and a desire to go beyond the norms that restricted so many others. Most memorably, he had an ability to instantly endear himself to so many people.

  He was a hero, no question.

  Neil Cadigan

  PROLOGUE

  HAPPY FINISH, TRAGIC ENDING

  14 JUNE 2012

  The day had come. My son, Andrew Scott Cadigan, was on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, about to face a rousing welcome from family, friends, Leukaemia Foundation staff and a Channel Ten news crew after walking over 15,000 kilometres around Australia. His journey had begun two days after Christmas 2010 when I dropped him off and watched him stroll away, heading south down the Princes Highway pushing the modified pram he would name ‘Redge’ (after his beloved dog).

  Here we were, 536 days yet seemingly a lifetime later. Andrew had survived. He’d changed. He’d grown. And he had signalled this day as the end of one life and the start of another.

  My wife, Chris, and I were part of the ‘A team’ that stepped the last few kilometres with him down the Pacific Highway. My pride and emotion spilled over, and I could feel the tears welling in my eyes as we approached the small group waiting for him at the finish line. This was an extraordinary human achievement, the extent of which could only fully be understood by those closest to him, who were aware of the physical and mental torture he’d had to overcome. But for now, that was all forgotten.

  Andrew was usually known as ‘Cad’, just as I am widely referred to as ‘Caddo’ instead of Neil. For a couple of kilometres as we paced up the hill from St Leonards and down the next towards North Sydney, Cad and Caddo inadvertently found themselves well in front of the ten others who wanted to be there for his final hard yards. It was one of the few times in a long while that Andrew and I were able to spend some time alone as father and son and just chew the fat. Mostly we touched on what it meant to be just the third person to have travelled around the country on foot solo (that is, without a support crew), and how it felt to have almost finished the daily grind that had seen him walk from Darwin to Sydney in just ninety-nine days, and from Townsville in only five weeks.

  Cad had pushed his Chariot pram – one of those three-wheelers you often see young mothers jogging behind – which contained his food, water and camping essentials, through the toughest of conditions. He’d seen temperatures drop to just above freezing overnight, and trekked through torrential rain and almost plague-like intrusions of flies, locusts, mice and mosquitos. He’d also had to withstand excessive heat in the Kimberley, which had reached 45 degrees Celsius, with high humidity, defying what were undoubtedly life-threatening conditions at times to often walk 50 to 75 kilometres a day, his only company a solar-panel-charged iPod and iPhone, and occasionally the welcome company of passing travellers.

  A man, a pram, two feet and a heartbeat.

  Cad posted the first of what would become frequently viewed video blogs just south of Sydney Airport early in the afternoon of 27 December 2010. As I held the camera in a gusty wind, he announced that he was dedicating the walk – named Oz On Foot – to Chris ‘Simmo’ Simpson, a mate he’d lost to cancer at the age of twenty-four.

  With Cad being typically disorganised and in a rush to get going, I had to drive him down to Blakehurst to embark on his first steps so that he could clear the heavy residential areas of southern Sydney before dark; we’d agreed that it would be our secret that his starting point wasn’t actually the airport but an hour’s walk down the highway. Almost a year and a half later, after he had decided to end the epic trek at another Sydney landmark, our famous bridge, his commitment to go strictly ‘by the book’ was so firm that I had to drop him back to that same spot on the Princes Highway, so he could backtrack to the bridge and ensure he did not miss one metre of the designated course.

  That was Cad. The promise he’d made at Simmo’s wake in May 2010 to dedicate his trek to him may have become an enemy to his physical and mental health, but it was also his driving force and ultimate test of character, loyalty and endurance, as well as the catalyst for a deep search inside his sometimes troubled soul. His mission became a vow not to quit on Simmo, himself or his goal.

  But back to the finish. As we trooped as one unit – with Simmo’s brother, Josh, and his parents, Wayne and Kim, among us – towards the shadows of the northern pylon of the bridge, I asked that we stop and get a group photo for posterity. Then Andrew and Josh lifted Redge up the stairs and we strolled the last short stretch to where my sister Alison, her daughter, Megan, Cad’s other cousin, Luke, representatives of the Leukaemia Foundation and more friends waited at the centre point of the bridge’s walkway. The Ten Network cameras captured Cad’s final steps towards the cheering that awaited him.

  He did a TV interview with Ten’s Nick Lockyer, embraced his supporters (I noticed Wayne and Kim tearing up; Chris and I were too), and posed for photos. At last, his soul-testing sojourn had ended.

  He placed his iPhone in its bracket on the handle of his pram, just as he had more than two hundred times before, and on the bridge recorded the last of his video blogs, which hundreds of people had regularly tuned in to – people from all parts of Australia and all walks of life, all of whom had been inspired by Andrew, even if they’d met only briefly en route.

  I will never forget the words he spoke into the camera as he began his sign-off. It remains a chilling reminder of how uncertain and cruel life can be.

  ‘Day 536, done and dusted,’ he said. ‘It’s all over. The alarm clock has gone off; I’ve woken up from this nightmare. Day 536 … But tomorrow will be day one: getting on with the rest of my life.’

  18 JUNE 2012

  It was a somewhat understated moment; well, tragically, it seems that way now. I pulled up at the drop-off zone of Sydney International Airport; as anyone who has witnessed the Gestapo-like attitude of the parking authorities there would know, it’s not the place for prolonged farewells.

  Andrew grabbed his two sports bags – full of the only possessions he would need for a while – and held out his hand to shake mine. We put our arms around each other and he said something like, ‘Well, I’ll see ya when I see ya, but I’ll definitely be home for Christmas.’

  I replied along the lines of, ‘You take care. I’m proud of you, mate.’ I might have told him I loved him too, which would have embarrassed him; blokes don’t do that, he would have thought. He was never one to show loving emotion anyway, although he had told his mother he loved her when she farewelled him – the last time they would speak.

  Then he was gone. He took a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok that he had only booked days earlier; until then he couldn’t make up his mind whether to head overseas or reintroduce himself to life back on the Central Coast. In the end, he felt he had to get away and take stock.

  While stuck in the Top End during the wet season, he’d taken himself off to Pattaya in Thailand, from late December 2010 through January and February 2011, to recuperate, build up some weight and put muscle on a body that had been reduced to 55 kilograms. And to regain some his heavily eroded peace of mind too, although he hid that well on the surface. During the final month of his walk he tossed up whether to return to Thailand, this time to Chiang Mai in the country’s north, to rest and work on the diaries he’d handwritten almost daily during his trek, and which he had finally decided to turn into a book about his conquest.

  He had some work lined up in Karratha, in Western Australia, a way he could rebuild his bank balance. While Cad had raised over $65,000 for the Leukaemia Foundation and the Cancer Council, he’d found it hard to accept even $10 in charity for himself, despite h
aving used the money from the sale of his house to fund the walk and sustain him during such a long non-earning period. The pressure he’d put on himself to quickly finish the massive renovation of his home in beachside North Avoca and then head off indefinitely had essentially led to the end of his six-year relationship with his partner, Jaime, which was a great shame.

  In the end, he’d decided to take a break, booking his ticket to Thailand the day after he walked back over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He was initially only going to Thailand for three to four weeks, so he could do the Karratha job from late July, but his West Australian friends Jessica and Steve Browne said that if he arrived later and was ready to work – and he had a stronger work ethic than anyone I have known – the job would wait for him. So he was going to be in Chiang Mai for probably three months (he had booked a return flight for 18 August), transcribing his diaries and enjoying some travel into Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Well, that was the plan; Cad always had a plan.

  As I drove him to the airport, after picking him up from his cousins’ home in Marsfield, Sydney, where he’d stayed the night before, I was still musing about why he had to shoot through so soon. I wanted to spend more time catching up with him, as did his family and friends. But he had changed so much during his walk that he’d developed a fear of reverting to his old lifestyle on the Central Coast and being distracted from transferring his diaries to content for his book. It was time, he felt, to move on from the crazy image many had of him, and from his workaholic ways as a carpenter. He’d grown up, and he’d also grown his bucket list of things he had to experience and achieve. Travel was at the top.

  Typically, all the way to the airport Cad was on his phone, returning texts or emails and fielding calls. Thus, we didn’t have any deep and meaningful father–son chat, which was not unusual but is now a regret.

  He’d first hit the Central Coast on a Sunday, ten days earlier. I hooked up the trailer and picked him and his pram up at Ourimbah after he’d finished, solo, his ‘Triple Marathon Madness’ – walking 126.6 kilometres without rest (that’s the equivalent of three Olympic marathon courses), mostly in pouring rain, some of it with mates by his side. I could tell he was broken, physically and mentally. We had sold our house at Point Clare, also on the Central Coast, just a week earlier and were staying with our best friends, Mandy and Alan Shaw, so Andrew had elected to bunk with his grandmother at her retirement village at Point Clare, which ‘Ma’ had been looking forward to. Unfortunately, she was hit by her third bout of pneumonia in a year just days before Andrew reached the Coast and was in Gosford Hospital. So Andrew had her place to himself.