Day 69 – Bloody Headwinds – Mannum to Murray Bridge

From: Mannum Caravan Park
To: Murray Bridge Marina Caravan Park
Distance: 43km
Time in Boat: 7.3hrs
Total Distance Travelled: 2274km
Distance to Go: 110km

Last night was another pretty rough sleep. At around 2am, a bunch of galahs (the bird type) decided to have a massive fight in the tree above my tent. Not only did it keep me awake, they also pooped all over my tent. After putting ear plugs in I got another couple of hours of sleep. At around 5.30am I got up and made a coffee and started packing up.

Ghislain arose just as I was packing my tent. We decided to basically split up today and paddle separately. I was pretty keen to do these last few days on my own and because it was going to be strong headwinds, I also wanted to go at my own pace. So I pushed off at around 7am and was again treated to a nice sunrise.

I have to declare that today was the most boring stretch of river. It was just wide and straight. It quickly became just a case of getting on with it and commuting down to Murray Bridge.

At around 9.30am the headwinds started to pick up. The next 4 hours then became a real slog. It was probably some of the hardest paddling I have had for the last few weeks.

At around 1pm I finally reached Murray Bridge. The caravan park I am staying at is about 2.5km further down the river, but there was a club on the river bank selling coffee, so I decided to have a coffee break before doing the last few kilometres.

I have a cabin booked for a couple of nights at the caravan park. So it is time for a well deserved rest days after 7 days and 284km since Waikerie.

Once I got all my gear out to dry and had a shower, I rang a taxi to come and drive me to the closest shops (which are not close) to get some food for dinner and my rest day. After 30 minutes of waiting it didn’t show so I rang them and they said it was still going to be 20-30 minutes. So I gave up on them and decided to walk. The walk ended up being 40 minutes each way to the closest shops which really was the last thing I wanted after a hard day of paddling.

So now I am wrecked and going to have an early night to prepare myself for a day of editing videos.