After many years of planning, Mornington Peninsula kiteboarder Nik Shepheard will shortly cast off the bow lines for an epic kiting adventure. More than a lark, however, Nik is on a mission to connect with people on his way around Australia's great coast.

Swellnet recently spoke to Nik about his coming venture, asking him why he's doing it, and also his plans for crossing treacherous waters.

Swellnet: Nik, word is you've got a bit of a trip ahead of you. When are you heading off?
Nik Shepheard: I'm leaving in maybe two or three weeks.

Really? That's sooner than I thought. How long have you been planning it for?
I've been working on the project for the last eight years, planning to get it done. I've run into a few hurdles with sponsorship and finances and all those sorts of things, but I've managed to secure myself a 34-foot boat. It's an ex-dive charter vessel. There's no car involved with the trip. It's just a boat. Myself and my skipper.

We're going to get deckhands to come in periodically as volunteers to assist, as well.

How long and how far do you intend to kiteboard each day?
That will depend on mother nature. There'll be stretches of the coast that I'll be kiting all day. Maybe 8-10 hours.

Impressive.
I've been training for this for the last seven or eight years, and I've stepped it up a fair bit in the last year. I'm running and I'm off the grog, and I'm just really getting the body right to be able to do these sorta kays. Look, I'm kiting three hours at a stretch now and stepping onto the beach feeling like I haven't even been out there.

I'm ready. 

OK, you're doing a lap of Oz, tropics in the north, Roaring Forties down south. Does your plan involve timing the right winds at various places?
Yeah but the window of opportunity is getting bleaker and bleaker as the year goes on. Originally, my plan was to leave at the start of January and the reason for that was to give myself, say, three months to get up the East Coast, then once we get to Rockhampton we can give ourselves as much time as possible to get across the top before the wet starts again.

But we've had boat problems and we're getting later and later now, and what it means is I've got to make up that time. Or that distance, I should say.

What about dangerous stretches of water? Can we talk about those for a moment?
Ha, yes we can, because basically wherever you jump in the water in Australia, something wants to either bite you or sting you. And I suppose it's not just animals, you've got sections of the Victorian coast that are pretty hairy. You've got the Great Australian Bight...most people just look at me and say, "You're not going to get through there."

But I just keep doing what I do, and I've got a goal in mind.

What are the plans to cross the Bight? Are you going to hang down near Israelite Bay, or somewhere like that, and wait for good weather?
One of the biggest challenges is getting through there, because there's about...well let's call it 1200 kilometres of nothing. I've spoken to a few people who have circumnavigated Australia in different types of vessels. One particular fellow circumnavigated Australia in two rigid inflatable boats, five metre boats, and said he found safe anchorages in about twenty metres of water. He said he doesn't know whether God was looking after him, or whatever, but he managed to find five of those in a row.

You read a lot of things and there's a lot of people who comment on things when they haven't done it before. Yet you speak to the people who have done it and you realise it's possible. I mean, there are certain times of year that are more favourable - obviously the warmer months down there.

If we can get rolling really soon, then yeah, we'll be able to catch those.

Nik, it's going to be an epic mission, can you explain why you're doing it?

I'm raising awareness for depression and suicide. I was nearly a statistic and my attempt was averted many years ago by my partner, and my then-five year old son.

I look at this whole thing as celebrating my second chance of life and I guess I've got a bit to say about it. I share how I got myself back on track and also how to stay well. That's my message and this is how I'll be spreading it.

You'll be speaking at various times around the coast?
Definitely. That's the biggest part of this thing. My plan is to, wherever we're stopping, try to strike up public speaking engagements anywhere where people congregate. Workplaces, schools, volunteer organisations, surf clubs, RSLs. I joined Rotary about three years ago, so I'm hoping Rotary will assist me with engagements.

We've also got an initiative that we want to start, it's basically leaving a legacy everywhere we go and the initiative is called Beach Reach

Beach Reach is a gathering of people at their local beach. It's for people who suffer mental illness and also for their carers as well - their family and friends. It can be started by one person, and it can be shared through social media and they can meet once a week, once a fortnight, or once a month...whatever they choose. And they can simply swap stories, provide assistance, support, resilience, hope, resources, all those sorts of things

It's such a simple idea, and I believe it can save lives.

How do you plan to start it?
Every place we stop, we're going to try and find somebody and bestow them that role, someone who would like to, say, start that chapter of Beach Reach in their local town. It's a good way for people to meet new people in the town, as well as catch up with old friends and all that sort of stuff.

These people come to the beach, bring whatever it is that they use or do - it could be walking their dog, so they bring their dog, or their surfboard, or their standup paddleboard, or their kites, or whatever - and they share that amongst the group.

That's the starting point for sharing stories and feeling that they're not the only ones, basically. That's what we're trying to do, as we go around Australia.

Have people reached out to you from various parts of the coast already?
Yeah, there has been a few here and there already reach out. I've been head down, bum up for the last six months with this boat and I haven't really pushed the social media side of things much at all. My main aim is just to get on the water and get going. But yeah, over the last five or six years, I've had people contact me about assistance.

I'm hoping we get some media along the way and we get some notoriety and we've got people calling us instead of us calling them, to come and speak and those types of things. It's an evolving thing.

And funding?
We've had fundraising events, plus I've got a GoFundMe page happening. We've got heaps of little sponsors, but no major partners yet.

A lot of it I've funded myself, and I'll be continuing to do that until we can get other people to step in. I'd really like to get some government funding for Beach Reach. I'd like to employ some professionals, some counsellors and psychologists who are able to travel up and down the coast and meet up with these groups and provide support that way. 

OK Nik, we'll keep track of your journey and finger's crossed you get to leave soon. How long do you expect it will take?
If I end up making it back, it'll be anything from 12 to 15 months all up.

Visit Nik's GoFundMe page

Readers seeking support and information about depression can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.