In the garden of the residence of the Russian ambassador in Canberra, love blooms. An unlikely love if you're the settling-down type.
Evgeny Kovalevskiy was at the centre of worldwide concern a month ago when the 9-metre inflatable catamaran he and two others were sailing around the world in was attacked by sharks and started sinking 800 kilometres off the coast of Queensland.
He's just been in Canberra with his new fiancee Yulia Kalyuzhnaya, to whom he proposed on Easter Island before setting off on the meeting with cookie-cutter sharks.
They're called cookie-cutter because of the way they attack - a big bite and then a twist to take out a cylindrical chunk (just like cookie cutters do with pastry).
She is from the Tomsk State University in Siberia and was at the coordinating centre for the round-the-world voyage.
She went to Easter Island and he proposed. She said she thought about it and then accepted.
He gave her an Easter Island necklace made of metal and wood instead of a ring.
They have been in Canberra as part of their effort to raise money to complete the circumnavigation.
He said the adventurers had bought a new boat in Sydney, though it wasn't inflatable - just a standard yacht.
He is not frightened about the next stage of the trip. She is.
"Yes, of course, I'm frightened because I love him," the fiancee said.
"I'm not frightened because I've had experience of extreme adventures over 50 years," the 66-year-old Kovalevskiy said.
He looks the part, straight out of central casting with his long beard, lithe body and mischievous eyes.
"My father could kill a bear without a gun. I can, too," he says. "But only a small bear."
He said that people thought he was crazy for going into danger. He said he wasn't. He was following his destiny, he said.
"The crazy people are the ones who don't follow their destiny," he said.
His destiny now is to complete the Russian Geographical Society circumnavigation in order to honour the Russian explorers of the early 19th century who did the same.
