The 32-year-old ultra-endurance athlete who paddled her surf ski 12,700 kilometres around the country in 254 days is only the fifth person to successfully lap Australia on a ski or kayak. She is the second woman to achieve the feat.

The Gold Coast athlete is expected to have achieved four Guinness World Records including fastest person to circumnavigate Australia by paddle, where she beat the mark of the only other woman to paddle Australia, Freya Hoffmeister from Germany, by 78 days.

She is the youngest person to complete the journey, and set the longest distance paddled in 24 hours by a woman after covering 213 kilometres off Cape York, from Lockhart River past Flinders Island, in a day.

Hancock used the paddle to raise awareness and funds for mental fitness charity Gotcha 4 Life.

“You absolutely have moments where you start to question what you were thinking. I was far more naïve setting out at the start than I am now,” Hancock said after arriving at the Gold Coast.

“And I know now how big the country is and the conditions. It makes me respect the ocean so much.”

Hancock said she paddled with dolphins, whales, sharks and even crocodiles on the epic trip.

The most testing was a horror 17-day stretch across the Great Australian Bight where she made a strategic decision to paddle 500 kilometres off the coast, rather than hug the coastline, to cut 1,000 kilometres off her circumnavigation.

Facing six metre swells, huge storms and freezing Antarctic water, Hancock endured the 17 days and nights in high seas and horrendous condition, struck with seasickness.

“There was a night where I fell off and the surf ski hit me in the head. In the Great Australian Bight it takes 12 minutes of submersion to get hypothermia. I was in for 10 minutes, so I was fortunately able to get to the boat, but I was shivering uncontrollably. It was a very scary moment,” she said.

“Mentally and physically to be honest, it was quite traumatic. I kept telling myself just take the next stroke.”

When she hit Esperance after the 17-day ordeal, Hancock was rushed by ambulance with a police escort to hospital. She was treated for dehydration and exhaustion, tested for Covid, then sent back to sea for seven days in “Covid isolation” for her paddle to Albany.

Marathon paddler Bonnie Hancock says the Great Australian Bight was the toughest leg of her round-Australia paddle. (images, supplied)

Hancock said finally turning Cape York to head down the Queensland coast, she knew she was racing against conditions.

In one mammoth session to get ahead of looming weather off Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula, she set the new world mark for a 24-hour paddle where she paddled 213 kilometres with only two 15-minute breaks.

Hancock said the final record to be submitted would be the fastest paddle of the length of each Australia state.

“I’ve got to actually do a little paddle down to the border of NSW to get that one record for Queensland though,” she said.

Hancock has raised almost $75,000 towards her target of $100,000 for Gotcha 4 Life that works to end suicide by delivering programs that create meaningful mateship, build emotional muscle, and strengthen social connection in local communities.