SINCE getting his first push bike and disappearing all day with the other local boys into the forests around Clophill in England, adventure has coursed through Howard Rogers’ veins.
Moving to New Zealand to study forestry provided a perfect opportunity to explore its mountains. Howard joined a group becoming one of the first to undertake an unsupported traverse of the South Island of New Zealand, climbing the main peaks of the Southern Alps over a three-month period.
On another New Zealand mountaineering trip, he was knocked out by a rock fall during a storm on Mount D’Archiac.
“We were climbing in the storm and the rocks hit my helmet knocking me out, leaving me dangling on the rope. Some other climbers rescued me and lowered me down to an ice shelf where I was rescued the following day,” he recalled.
Still reaching for the sky he took up paragliding and moved to Canungra to pursue his passion.
However, in 2003 Howard’s canopy collapsed while trying to land near Wonglepong and he fell out of the sky breaking his pelvis, his back in three places and damaging internal organs, spending four days in an induced coma.
After this he decided to stay a little closer to the ground and took up sea kayaking.
“In 2016, along with two other men, we tried to cross the Bass Strait,” Howard said.
“It’s one of the most notorious crossings you can do in sea kayaking and one of the ultimate goals as an expedition sea kayaker.”
“After ten days we got halfway but due to winds over 40 knots and swells more than five metres we had to make the tough decision to return to Tasmania as the weather was too unstable.
Leaving Canungra after 12 years, Howard moved briefly to Kobble Creek, north of Brisbane, before returning to the Scenic Rim and Tamborine Mountain in 2018 with his family.
“I love the climate here and the mountains of the Scenic Rim. I’ve climbed many of the mountains around the region, including Mt Barney, via various routes, about 15 times,” he said.
“I love the sense of wilderness and there’s often no one else around.”
As an ecologist, Howard has spent most of his career in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and for three years lived in Lae working at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology’s Department of Forestry.
“It’s a wild place, but the people are friendly, and the landscape is amazing. I also love the chaos of life there,” he explained
“Unexpected things happen every week. There could be tribal skirmishes using traditional weapons on the main road, but they’d stop to let an expat drive through before resuming their fight.”
“In remote areas the villages would treat me like I was royalty. For people who had nothing and live a subsistence life, they’d offer me everything they had.”
“I’ve never been anywhere where people have been as kind. It’s very humbling.”
“If I was travelling through an area on foot, they’d send people with me to the boarder of their land and then say goodbye to make sure nothing bad happened to me while I was on their land. One trip across the Huon Peninsula they walked alongside me for 20 kilometres.”
Howard recently returned from ten gruelling days of cycling around the centre of the South Island of New Zealand in the Great Southern Brevet. Eight of those days were done with a cracked rib after falling off in the mud on day two.
“It was 1,100 kilometres with over 19,000 metres of ascent on the mountainous terrain of Central Otago on gravel roads and dirt tracks,” Howard said.
“It was brutal on my mind and body; cycling up to 22 hours a day and sleeping for a few hours on the side of a hill or by the track. Sometimes I’d have to get off and push the bike for five hours.”
Undeterred, he’s now gearing up for the Hunt 1000, a bike packing race from Canberra to Melbourne through the Snowy Mountains, in November.
