58 AWW.COM.AUAUGUST 2017
PICTURES SUPPLIED BY JADE HAMEISTER AND USED WITH PERMISSION.FROM TOP: The
Hameister family,
Vanessa, Kane,
Paul and Jade;
hauling supplies
over rocky terrain
with the team;
blue skies and
ice as Jade skis.“Because it’s epic,” she says,
“because it’s something that
I love. As much as I can hate
it at times, at the end you just
want to be back there ...
It’s adventure.”
Among the Greenland
highlights were breathtaking
sunsets and one surreal morning
when she and her team were
enveloped in low cloud, unable
to see a metre beyond them. And
despite the gruelling conditions,
she relished spending hours on
end with only her thoughts.
At home, there are too many
distractions: “I don’t watch
TV,” she says, “but social
media is the killer for me.”
Jade’s dad, Paul, who joined
her on the trip, along with
a guide and a two-person
National Geographic
camera team, witnessed an
extraordinary coming-of-age
in his daughter. “Kids of Jade’s
generation just don’t get the
time to think,” says Paul, a
successful businessman and
only the 12th Australian to
climb the Seven Summits,
including Everest. “There’s
constant stimulation – every
minute there’s a bloody
Snapchat coming through
or some kind of ping on their
phone. Just to watch your child
move away from that influence
and into a raw environment
where they’ve got to work out
who they are and deal with real
stuff is really rewarding.”
Like most teenagers, he says,
Jade isn’t too receptive to parenta a ce, e
camera assistant on the trip was Heath Jamieson,
an ex-special forces officer in the Australian Army
who had served in Afghanistan, been shot through
the neck and told he’d never walk again – pretty
much the personification of tough. He gave Jade
some valuable tips on endurance.
“When he’s struggling, he’ll smile or make
himself laugh – and it works,” says Jade. “He’ll
tell himself that he’s strong and he can do it. He
also takes himself to another place and tries to
forget about everything.”
Jade had her own revelations as well. “You
have that much time to think, you learn so much
about yourself,” she says.
“When I was struggling, I’d
tell myself to go a bit faster
and a bit harder, even if I
thought I was about to give
up. You realise that what you
once thought were your limits
aren’t your limits – and then
you realise there reallyaren’t
any limits.”
Determined to reach her
goal and willing to suck up
any hardship to get there, Jade
has only grown in her father’s
estimation. “There’s no way
I can look at Jade the same
way anymore because on these
expeditions she has to be an
independent, self-motivated,
equal team member – you can’t
carry her because you’re so
busy struggling just to look
after yourself and survive,”
says Paul. “She would often
be quiet and you knew that
she was dying on the inside, but
not once did she complain.”
At night, the mercury
dipped below -20 degrees, but
ironically it was the heat in
Greenland that caused havoc.
Jade and Paul wore gear
designed to withstand -100
degree cold, but daytime
temperatures hovered
unseasonably around zero,
which meant their feet sweated
and blistered and the daily
25km treks were hard-going.
The heat also meant the ice
had receded at the start of the
journey and the team had to
join forces to shuttle each of
e r e s e s across more than a kilometre
of dirt and rock before they reached the ice,
costing them valuable time.
The heat in Greenland, coupled with the ice
breaking up last year at the North Pole, has left
Jade in no doubt about climate change. “I’m a
big believer,” says Jade, the focus of a National
Geographic documentary that will chronicle her
Greenland and South Pole treks and her growing
understanding of global warming. “Because I’ve
seen it first hand, I know it’s happening.”
Jade has become a refreshing new role model
for her generation. In her TEDx talk last year, she
implored fellow young women to dream big and