Hello, I am Paula Bennett and welcome to my New Zealand Herald podcast, Ask Me Anything.
And one thing I've learned in life is it's never too late to learn something new. So, on this podcast, I talk to people from all walks of life to hear about how they got to where they are and get some advice and guidance on some of life's biggest questions.
An incredible story for you this episode. I am joined by author of Wave Walker, Suzanne Heywood. When she was just 6 years old, Suzanne's family set sail from England on what was set to be a three-year around the world adventure. But 3 years turned into a decade, and a life for Suzanne that lacked stability, a journey she describes as stealing her childhood. Suzanne is heading to New Zealand for next week's Auckland Writers Festival and joins me now. Hi Suzanne.
Hi. Very good to be talking to you.
Oh well, thank you so much for taking this time. I'm really excited about getting to know you a bit more and talk about that adventure. Now, a bit of housekeeping from me. Um, two rules for our chat. First is I'm allowed to ask you anything, but the good news is you don't have to answer cuz that's just one of life's rules, I think. And the other one I think is quite normal as well and I call this the safe space. So we do the no judgy zone. You be you and you be you and I'll be me. So to ease us in quick fire question. So reading the book, do you prefer Sue, Susie or Suzanne?
And do different people from different times in your life call you different things?
They do indeed because I was always called Sue on the boat and when I left the boat one of the things that I did not immediately but a little bit later is I deliberately shifted back to my kind of full name Suzanne and for me it's a little bit of a break with the past.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In you defining your identity as to who you wanted to be. Yeah. I like it. Okay. Are you a cook if could you would you cook dinner? But what would be your go-to meal?
Oh well all sorts of things. I love fish, which probably comes from living on a boat. Uh, love soups, salads. Uh, I like cooking actually, but I'm not a very elaborate cook. I'm a very kind of practical cook. I like to kind of cook things that don't take too long.
And if you could have anybody at that dinner table, who would it be?
Wow. Well, I have a few kind of questions for Captain Cook, uh, as we will discover as we go on in the story. Um, so, uh, so, so perhaps Captain Cook has a bit of explaining to do.
All right, let's chat about your book, Wave Walker, Suzanne, and the journey your parents took you on as a child. Um, and then in the second half, I'd just love to sort of explore the impact it had on you and relationships. I've got to tell you, I couldn't put the book down. I am sort of known for being a bit of a speed reader and always in a hurry, and I did not do that with this. In fact went back and reread paragraphs and even chapters at times because I sort of felt that I had rushed a bit and I wanted to explore it more. So, thank you so much for writing the book and for taking, you know, me on that journey with you.
Well, thank you for reading it. I mean, I'm really happy that so many people have come on that journey because, as I'm sure we're going to find as we get into the story, there are some really interesting kind of messages and challenges that come out of it, as well as hopefully people finding it to be a great adventure.
Well, in the introduction, you say that you had excitement, frustration, and heartbreak. And I've got to say, reading it, I felt exactly the same. You know, I felt all of those emotions and probably more. And um yeah, I found it quite incredible how you were able to portray that in the written word.
Well, I think most stories, most kind of real human stories will have kind of elements of all of those. And I think it would be wrong for me to portray my childhood as one-dimensional. It wasn't all bad. Um it certainly wasn't all good. I mean, there were some incredible moments of adventure and I learned a lot, but overall it became very very challenging.
Okay. Well, let's back up then and tell those that haven't read the story um a bit about your story. So, you know, you headed off to sea as a six-year-old, weren't you?
Well, I was six years old when my father announced that he wanted to sail around the world. I was seven when we actually set sail back in 1976.
And did it come out of the blue? You weren't expecting, you know, like and your brother and yourself, you weren't expecting kind of here we go.
No, I wasn't. I mean, my father liked sailing. Uh, and he had a small boat that he used to sail off the south coast of England. Um, and I'd even been with him. I mean, we'd been out for kind of short sailing trips across the English Channel and various bits like that, but I had no idea that he was going to want to sail around the world. And I was a little girl of six. And when he announced this, I couldn't really conceive what that was going to be like. Um, but he told me it was going to take 3 years and we were going to come back. Everything was going to go back to normal. I'd obviously have to leave everything behind, my dog, my friends, everything. But we were going to come back. Um, and so it did sound like an adventure. And like a lot of little girls, I hero-worshipped my dad. So I don't think I ever really questioned it too much. It was just going to happen.
So, were both your parents behind the decision to go on the trip or was it I mean, it was predominantly your father's motivation, wasn't it? His adventure.
It was definitely my father's motivation and that became kind of clearer as time went on. Uh, and you know, his stated motivation was that he wanted to recreate Captain Cook's third voyage around the world. It was the 200th anniversary of that voyage. And actually my maiden name is Cook although I now know that we're not actually a relative but my father comes from the same part of England. So it was really his motivation. He was really driven by this stated desire that he had um to kind of go and recreate this voyage. My mother didn't really like sailing but I mean she was there. I mean, she wasn't openly questioning it in front of me. So, she was definitely going to be part of it, but it was absolutely driven by my father.
Because she suffered seasickness, right? And quite regularly throughout the 10 years that you were, you know, on the yacht. I mean, she seemed to be sick just about every time you go on a new journey. Is that right?
Well, that's right. I mean, I now realize and I grew to learn about this over the years. You know, the amount of how seasick people get really varies person to person. So, my mother was on the worst end. And that meant that every time we left port, she was pretty much seasick for the first three days. Um, possibly, you know, kind of a little bit more. And she would take to her cabin for that time and just disappear and not come out. Um, and I realized this the first time that we set out to sea from England. I mean, she just disappeared, leaving me and my brother basically kind of fending for ourselves in the cabin as we hit the first of a whole kind of series of storms going down to South America. And we ended up just trying to look after ourselves. I mean, my father was steering the boat. My mother kind of disappeared and we were just kind of clinging on and trying to figure out what we were going to eat.
Well, and I mean, that is incredible in itself, right? Because your brother's a year younger than you. So at 6 and 7 years old, you were, you know, literally alone for hours and hours at a time and as you say, having to find food, make sure you had water and get your own sea legs in the beginning. I imagine.
That's right. I mean, the funny thing is, and I try to write the book as honestly as I can, you know, from my perspective at that point in time. And you know, people reading the book, they'll find in that initial bit, I mean, there's lots of wonder for me about being at sea and as the kind of storms quieten down and I start to see kind of birds at sea and then we see a dolphin and flying fish. These are all rather wonderful. But from an adult's perspective, you look back at that first voyage and I'm almost shocked kind of realizing that we were just left on our own trying to kind of work out what to do. We end up eating the cake that we were given just before we set sail. And that's how we kind of keep ourselves going because my father, as I say, is up on deck kind of steering the boat.
Well, at some level I admire your mother for getting back on the boat. Um, knowing that she suffers some seasickness cuz I have suffered myself. Um, I don't now, but it is a cruel illness, you know, like you feel like you almost want to die.
It is horrible actually. And I'm very lucky because I inherit from my father a pretty tough stomach. So, I would feel queasy but nowhere near as ill. But then you ask yourself, why would you go sailing around the world with your wife and two little kids when your wife gets very badly seasick? And then if you're the person who gets very badly seasick, why would you go, you know, why not kind of just fly and meet my father from time to time? So yes, I agree. I have a lot of sympathy for that because it is a horrible feeling. But it was a decision that they both took to do it like this.
Yeah. Crazy. I can't get my head around that one, I've got to say. So, there you go. Now, let's talk about the wave. Um, and that was what from the journey from South Africa going to Australia, weren't you? And you know, we talk about and that was a cyclone that came through.
Well, it wasn't actually a cyclone. So, we went all the way down to South America, across to South Africa, and then, as you say, we were setting off across the southern Indian Ocean to Australia. And I should explain here that we were, you know, compared to most round the world sailors, certainly kind of cruising sailors, we were sailing the wrong way around the world. Most people who are doing this on a kind of cruising basis, they sail the other way round from east to west because then you can sail around near the equator and generally you don't get very bad storms. But unfortunately, because we were following Captain Cook, he went the other way on his third voyage. So he went from west to east. And going west to east means sailing really far south. And so we were sailing across one of the most dangerous oceans in the world, which is the southern Indian Ocean. And several days out from Cape Town, we were hit by an enormous storm. I don't actually think it was a cyclone, but frankly, it was just an enormous storm. And the waves built up and built up and built up. And finally, an enormous wave, according to my father, who was up on deck, curled up over the stern of the boat, smashed down through the deck, kind of smashed a huge hole in the deck, out through the side, tipping the boat over on her side, flinging him into the water, and I was a little girl down below. I was still seven years old at this point. We were only six or seven months into our voyage. I was flung against the ceiling of the main cabin, against the wall, fractured my skull, broke my nose, was knocked unconscious and kind of came to in a bunk in the forward cabin and by that point the boat's on the verge of sinking. I mean we're filling up with water.
It's just absolutely staggering. So you're and you're still miles from anywhere, right? You're in the middle of nowhere. A there's the immediate danger that you're still in the storm. So I imagine that the adults are all doing what they're doing and they pretty much put you in the bunk and then trying to keep the boat afloat. But you were badly hurt. I mean, you know, you sort of said a fractured skull, but and over the next few days, you progressively realized how serious it was. Your face was swelling, wasn't it? Your head was swelling. It was quite serious.
That's right. I mean, I remember I'm a little girl, but what I remember is being in enormous pain. I got this incredible kind of swelling on my head. I also had a very bad cut on my arm, but my head was my major injury. Um, and we were in a very perilous situation. So, you know, we're sailing at a time before satellite navigation, before any kind of proper way of raising a Mayday. Uh there was nobody going to come and rescue us. We weren't sailing in a fleet. We were sailing on our own. So, it was very likely the boat was going to sink. Um, we were lucky because 3 days later we came across a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, an island called Amsterdam, uh, which has a tiny French base on it. And I was very lucky because on that island there was a doctor who was able to operate on my head and kind of operated on my head kind of multiple times, six or seven times, but unfortunately with no anesthetic because there you are on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Uh so that was also a horrific experience and then the whole thing both the wave as I always called it and the operations of course completely changed my understanding of the risk of this voyage and after that I'm actually really very afraid particularly when we're in storms.
I mean I was just staggered at because it was something like seven operations wasn't it that you had to relieve that swelling. Um, and so in some respects I was just absolutely appalled, but then as you say, I'm pleased you use the word lucky because I just thought, wow, coming across him and he saved your life ultimately.
That's right. I mean, this doctor, Dr. Small on this island, um, he was the one who did the operations and he didn't speak any English. I didn't speak any French. Uh, you know, I'm a little girl. I can't speak any French. Um, all I knew was one French swear word and I'm afraid all the way through these operations which I was kind of conscious for. I just kind of screamed the swear word at him. Um, I mean, when I was writing the book, I tracked him down. Uh, he's now retired and kind of raising chickens in the French countryside and I was eventually able to thank him because he did save my life. Um, as a little girl, I hated him. I mean, this man was just kind of causing me immense pain. And I did all those operations on my own because my mother refused to come in with me because she didn't like the sight of blood. So, you know, they were very very traumatic for a little girl.
Yeah. Really traumatic. And I mean, and then you were left on the island, weren't you, with your mother and your brother, and your father then sailed to Australia, and you eventually hopped on a container ship to get there.
That's right. Yeah. The British and the French government decided that the boat was too dangerous for my mother and my brother and me to get back on board. So my father kept sailing onto Australia with the two crew that we'd had when we left South Africa. Two novice crew. I mean my father always preferred taking novice crew on board because then he could teach them how to sail and they wouldn't kind of tell him what to do. Um and then my mother, my brother and I, yes, we kind of caught a container ship eventually. We hitched a lift on a container ship and made our way to Melbourne and then finally reunited with him in Fremantle.
Okay. My question is um what was happening on Amsterdam because when you were first going there they said that um there was a secret that was happening on the island and I don't think you told us what it was.
Well, the thing is I don't really know. I mean, it's a little French military base, I understand. Not very many men there. I mean, I'd kind of describe it as best I could. They were clearly doing scientific experiments on the island. They were sending up regular weather balloons. Um, I don't honestly know what they were doing. In addition to that, we were told very strictly, you know, that we couldn't walk off alone on the island. We were told that that was for our own security. Um, and I think I mean again as a small girl I didn't really kind of question this. I was so relieved to be on land. Um, petrified about these operations that I kept on being kind of taken off to have. Uh, but I was just relieved to be, you know, on land and not on the boat and effectively, you know, I knew that by finding this island, it had saved my life. It is a bit mysterious. I have to say it's slightly kind of odd. Uh but for those people who watch, there was a series called I think it was called Lost. Um that always reminded me of Amsterdam. There was always something slightly mysterious about that island.
Oh, there you go. Um it was How hard was it to get back on Wave Walker?
Well, you see what happened was by the time I got to Fremantle, the boat arrived after my mom and my brother and I arrived. Um, and then of course it was tied up on a next door wharf. So that was okay. And then she came out of the water and it actually took several months to repair the boat. She was so badly damaged. So that was also okay because she was on dry land. But when I got fearful again was when we got back on board and we set sail. Um, and for that voyage, we had a lovely member of crew on board, Mr. Ray, who I really bonded with as a little girl because, as your listeners may be gathering by now, my parents were not particularly kind of parental in the relationship that they had with me or my brother. They weren't very caring really. But Mr. Ray was a lovely character and he and I formed a very strong bond. But he remembers and he and I are still close today kind of looking at me as we set sail from Fremantle and seeing the kind of fear in my eyes as we set back out to sea again.
And so you then traveled to Sydney and then to New Zealand, but you didn't stay long in New Zealand that time, did you?
No, I mean we went to a few different places. We went to Queen Charlotte Sound and we went to Wellington and Napier up the coast and then Auckland. Um so we were there for a few weeks but not that long because we were basically making our way up. We had a real problem with the engine. So we ended up being stuck in Auckland for a little bit but then we set off up the Pacific up to Hawaii.
And that took about two years, right? With stopping at different islands and moving around.
Yes. Well, by the time we got to Hawaii, we'd actually been sailing for four years. So, you know, going all the way back to the beginning. My father originally promised the whole voyage was going to take three years and then I was going to go back to school. By the time we got to Hawaii, it was actually four years. So, now I'm a little girl of 11 and I'm getting pretty fed up of being on a boat for four years. I'm not really getting any schooling. My mother had initially said that she was going to teach us and she'd done a few kind of worksheets but basically she'd given up long before then. I was really bored. Um I was becoming you know starting to become a teenager. I wanted to be with friends. I wanted to be with school. Uh I wanted to go to school. I want to start kind of learning. And my relationship with my mother was starting to deteriorate. I mean she wasn't very happy on the boat anyway. But her and my relationship was starting to become very difficult. So my brother and I both voted to come home in Hawaii. But my father overruled us and said that his vote was the casting vote and we were going to keep sailing and effectively this kind of promise that we would come home after 3 years was null and void. You know, we were just going to keep on sailing, you know, with no end in sight.
