Wildboy Eyes of Fire

The Last Voyage of the

At the age of 16, Brando Yelavich admitted that he was well off the track – frequently shouting at his parents, in trouble with the police, doing drugs. He was on a slippery slope. With a mate, he decided to walk around New Zealand, but the mate went to Australia and the idea got shelved. Three years later, after completing a boot camp, Brando remembered his earlier commitment – and started walking from Cape Reinga.

He stuck to the coast as much as possible, scaling cliffs, getting caught by the tide, negotiating rivers and estuaries in his pack raft, kayak or as passenger on the boats of friendly locals.

Diet was black-backed gull, possum, seal, fish, plant life – sometimes he got it wrong, wild goat. Often, locals took him in but always dropped him off back where they had picked him up so that he remained true to his goal to walk around the coast, wherever he could.

Brando had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia; as he walked many of his issues around those diagnoses became clear for him. Anger fell away; a clarity about who he was and who he wanted to become emerged. He spoke at schools on his travels and raised $30,000 for Ronald Mcdonald House. He had thought the walk would take six months; it took nearly two years and cost him one girlfriend. By the end of the walk, he had another. Early on in the walk, he gave up his medication, realising it was just another drug.

The writing is not the most descriptive in terms of crashing waves and towering cliffs, but it is definitely Brando’s voice, un-polluted by a ghost writer, which is how many people would have done it. It’s well edited, although larger, clearer photos would have been nice. Where this book shines is its triumph of the inner man. As Brando says: “I now truly know who I am, inside and out…. From here I hope to inspire people to live their dreams and never give up. Impossible is nothing.”