After cheating death, Janet Eriksen embarked on a journey aboard a cargo vessel that's won her the Get Up & Go Award for Australia's most adventurous senior.

The way Janet Eriksen sees it, dying or at least the prospect of dying has proven to be an awfully big adventure. Diagnosed with breast cancer 14 years ago, Janet was convinced, with her nurse's expertise, that she would be "ashes" within a couple of years.

So she sat down and wrote out a list of all the things she wanted to do before dying, and systematically worked her way through them. It included items such as climbing Victoria's Mount Oberon; lying on the bed of the Finke River in the Northern Territory, staring up at the sky; and even buying two standard rose bushes simply because she loves them.

She's still adding to that list all these years later. Somewhere on it was crossing the ocean on a cargo ship, a notion that had long captivated her imagination.
Now she's not only done it, but it's scored her the Get Up & Go Award for Australia's most adventurous senior.

In October 2003, Janet, 64, boarded the MSC New Plymouth in Melbourne for a fortnight's voyage transporting cargo between Australia and New Zealand. As the only woman on board there were just two other passengers, both male she was met first with astonishment and then with friendly helpfulness. "At no time did I feel in the least threatened," she recalls.

Actually, it's hard to imagine Janet finding anything too threatening: bouncy and vivacious, her enthusiasm for life is quite irresistible. Husband Sven didn't accompany her because, as she says, "He gets seasick if he looks at a puddle! I dearly love my husband but, at times, it can be wonderful to be alone, to have solitude to reflect."

It was precisely the opportunity for reflection that attracted Janet to the cargo ship adventure in the first place. "I didn't want to go on a tourist cruise, I wanted a nature experience," she says. "I love being out there on the vastness of the sea; you get that feeling of communing with something bigger than yourself."

Within hours of leaving Melbourne, heavy swells were buffeting the ship, and Janet attired in life jacket and hard hat was catching a shower every time the ship rolled, which was often. "Atrocious weather, but what did that matter? My adventure had started!"

Unlike cruise ships, container vessels don't have stabilisers, which can make their rolling hell for those prone to seasickness. By the second afternoon out, the waves slamming into the New Plymouth were sending great sheets of spray 18m high over the bulkhead. "It was awe inspiring. I propped myself with a big pillow in my porthole and just stared at the waves," says Janet gleefully.

The New Plymouth's route took in stops at Bluff, Timaru, Christchurch, Wellington, Nelson and Sydney. While Janet enjoyed the splendid scenery and particularly being a keen gardener New Zealand's spring flowers, she admits it wasn't the destination so much as the journey that had her enthralled. She spent hours staring out of her cabin window, watching seagulls and albatrosses wheeling overhead. Fortunately, unlike her two fellow passengers, she's never suffered from seasickness, and actually enjoyed the towering waves.

Which is just as well, because the going was frequently rough.

"After 15 hours of sailing from Nelson, the captain suggested that we might put our life jackets under the edge of our mattresses to prevent us falling out of bed," Janet recalls.

"Alternatively, we could pull our mattresses down onto the floor."

Janet settled for wedging herself between cabin wall and bedside cupboard to avoid being catapulted out of her bunk.

"For about 20 hours, mostly in pitch blackness, the ship was tossed about like a cork in a spa," she says.

"When dawn came, the decks were swirling with seawater to a depth of about half a metre."

Yet Janet was unfazed by it all. She admits that, weather aside, she wasn't exactly roughing it. "As sole occupant of a 45m2 apartment lounge, bedroom and bathroom I was extremely comfortable."

However, her cabin, which was set high above the ship's superstructure, giving her an excellent vantage point, had one major disadvantage: "It was seven flights of stairs up 77 steps in all! Sometimes I was up and down those stairs six, seven times a day; I came back much fitter."

Her daily routine consisted of viewing videos she had brought with her, listening to CDs, playing bridge on her laptop, reading, taking turns out on deck and working on her journal.

The highlight of the voyage? "The morning when the phone rang and the captain said, 'Come up on the bridge, Janet'. So I went up and suddenly I smelled New Zealand! We were about 2km off the coast near Bluff, our first port of call, and after having been at sea for days the smell of loam, flowers, that beautiful spring smell, gave me immense pleasure."

After 12 days at sea, the New Plymouth had left New Zealand behind and was back within sight of Sydney. Janet's adventure was almost over.

The following day, the New Plymouth docked in Melbourne. "I was free to go, but I realised that part of me will sail in spirit with the New Plymouth for a long time to come," she says.

It's arguably the most remarkable experience she's had since making that life-affirming list all those years ago.

Since beating cancer she was considered out of the danger zone after surviving five years without any recurrence Janet, who lives in Waverley, Victoria, has literally seized the day. "I have much more self-confidence now because I have done so many things and found I really could get up and go," she explains.
The changes were professional as well as personal. After finishing her nursing career, Janet switched to social work and is now a grief counsellor with her own private practice, a calling she finds both challenging and enormously rewarding. As she says: "I not only didn't die, I've found a better way of living."

And the next big adventure? "The holiday I've won for the Get Up & Go Award island-hopping down Queensland's coast! It's the type of thing we love doing, more eco-touring than a dress-up-for-dinner type tour."

Yes, this time Sven will be coming along for the ride; solitude has its benefits but Janet wouldn't be without her beloved husband for too long.

Her feelings on winning the award for Australia's senior with the most get up and go? "I can't believe I won it for something I utterly enjoyed doing!" she exclaims. "I feel as though I've won a degree from the university of life; it's an acknowledgement that I've really done something."

She really has. After all her experiences, is there anything from that list that remains undone?

"I have done a lot of them, but it's an ever-increasing list, because whenever I hear of anything that sounds exciting or challenging or really good fun, it goes on the list."