Day 9 – Clarke Lagoon to Jingellic

From: Clarke Lagoon Wildlife Reserve (Tintaldra)
To: Jingellic
Distance: 33km
Distance to Go: 2336km

After a very pleasant sleep, I woke up early and found it was a lot warmer than the day before. It is amazing how quickly I have acclimatised, because 7 degrees is now feeling like a warm morning. After packing up and a quick chat to one of the caravaners, who was staying at the same campsite, I hit the water at around 8.30am.

It was a cloudy morning but by about 10am the clouds cleared and it became quite warm (especially because I was paddling in thermals). It was a very lovely morning of paddling, but fairly uneventful, so I started listening to an audio book while I paddled down the river enjoying the sunshine.

Today was always going to be a short day of paddling. The plan was always to camp on the reserve outside the Jingellic Pub. After all who could resist camping at a pub. So just after lunch I pulled up at the Jingellic Reserve and set up camp on the banks of the river. It was nice to be able to dry out some gear in the afternoon sun and spend some time catching up on emails and various social media things.

At about 4pm I needed to charge some of my gear, so I headed up to the pub (a whole 50m away), grabbed a beer, plugged in and started blogging away. Next thing I knew I had a surprise visit from from some ballooning friends, Ray and Marg, from Albury. They had been tracking my progress and they predicted I would be stopping at the pub, so they drove up and had a drink with me. This really made me realise that I am not doing this trip alone. There are a lot of people virtually (and physically) following along as well.

After a nice meal at the pub, I retired to the tent at around 7.30pm and I am pretty sure I passed out soon after.

Tomorrow I head towards the Hume Weir. I have about 100km to cover over the next 2 days. Since the Hume Weir is essentially a lake with no flow, I am going to try and tick off as many kilometres as I can tomorrow (while the water is flowing) to make Thursday’s crossing a bit shorter.