Summit to Sea

From: Collendina
To: Yarrawonga
Distance: 37km
Distance to Go: 1987km

This river is truly crazy. Every day has a different adventure and today was epic.

Today was all about crossing Lake Mulwala and getting to Yarrawonga. I managed to get a brief moment of phone reception last night and saw that a front was expected to come through at lunch time, so I decided leave early and get as far across the lake as I could before the front hit. I was so organised that I sitting the bank of the river waiting for it to be light enough to paddle. I was on the water as soon as the sun started to rise and was treated to a beautiful sunrise.

The first few hours of the paddle were lovely. There were lots of birds and the river started to widen as I got closer to Lake Mulwala. The forecasted winds were working in my favour and gave me fair bit of assistance as I paddled.

When I arrived at Bundalong, which is pretty much at the start of the lake system, the wind really started to pick up. While I was having a quick break at the Bundalong boat ramp, one of the local charter fishing operators said “geez… you’ll be able to surf across the lake today mate”. He wasn’t wrong.

The upstream part of Lake Mulwala is made up of lots of lagoons, creeks and wrong turns. You can just follow the main river path, but there are plenty of short cuts. After yesterday’s wrong turn, I decided to send up the drone and check out the best path. That worked perfectly and I found a very direct path across the lake.

Once I got into the middle of the lake, I could see the frontal system forming on the horizon. The northerly wind started to really pick up and the water became very choppy. Soon the wind was gusting at 48kmh (I checked online afterwards) and the waves were starting to get up to 0.5m with the odd wave getting close to 1m (with white caps). I have paddled this sort of water a lot in Sydney’s harbours, but never with a fully loaded boat and definitely not while trying to also dodge logs and trees. The wind and the waves were coming from the side most of the time, so they were crashing over the deck of my boat and pushing be sideways toward the logs and dead trees. After about 5km (about an hour) of this carnage I decided it was getting a bit wild and I needed to get closer to the shore (about 2km away). I surfed the waves towards the shore and then the wind really picked up. I needed to head north west to get around the curve in the shore, which meant I started heading into the wind which was unpleasant to say the least.

I got to the point were I just needed to get off the water before I was rolled or smashed against something. Unfortunately the river bank was all residential homes that had concrete and brick retaining walls along the bank. The waves were crashing against them and there was no way I could get close to them. After about 20 minutes of fighting the wind I eventually found a small beach, so I charged at it and jumped out of the kayak before it got filled with water by the waves.

So I was now safe of the land, but I was still 5km (by lake) to where I was staying. So I decided it was time to embark on a massive portage. I repacked the boat into portage mode (all the weight at the front), created a shoulder sling out of some strapping I had and started walking up the road. I then looked at Google Maps and it was going to be a 7km hike. Oh boy.

It was brutal. At Kath’s recommendation I took a pre-emptive anti-inflammatory knowing that it would destroy my back walking while pushing the boat. Fortunately, a small bit of relief was that I was walking through a new residential area that was being developed, and they had just finished a new concrete bike path that followed the road. This meant for most of the walk I had a smooth track and was well clear of the traffic on the highway.

After 5km of walking along the highway I came across a petrol station that had a pie shop, so I was able to sit down and have lunch before continuing. With a new found, pie and donut induced, energy I pushed on through suburban Yarrawonga, across the main street (which attracted a lot of odd looks) and then down to the Yarrawonga Holiday Park. As I checked into my cabin, the skies opened up and the rain associated with the front started to pour. At least I missed out on getting wet… well until I had to walk to the pub for dinner.

I am now absolutely knackered. As a result and to allow for this weather system to move through, I have decided to bring forward my rest day (planned for 2 days time) and spend 2 nights in Yarrawonga. So tomorrow is a day of video editing and recuperating.

From: Corowa
To: Collendina
Distance: 34km
Distance to Go: 2046km

Note: This is posted a day late because I had no internet.

I think I found my mojo today. After a couple of days of being a bit down about the lack of water in the river, I decided this morning to suck it up and just start enjoying it… and I did.

I woke up early (again) and trollied (not a word but I am using it) my gear down to the boat ramp to begin packing the boat. It was a lovely morning with the sun rising over the river. It was only -1 degree but I was running around in just a T-shirt, so I must be getting acclimatised to these cold conditions. As I was organising my gear, Ed (the caravan park owner) came down to check it all out and we had a good chat on the edge of the river. I was procrastinating a bit, so I was happy for the excuse not to start paddling.

The first hour or so of the paddle was pretty straight forward, but then the river started getting shallower and shallower as the morning progressed. After a few hours I came to a point in the river where it split in two. Half the water went to the North down what looked like a creek full of trees, and the other half went to the South down what appeared to be the main river. On my paper map, the creek to the North barely showed up and Google satellite view did not provide much more helpful information, so I did the logical thing and followed the river as marked on the map.

This ended up not being the right decision, because the river basically dried up. Most of the next 10km was less than 30cm deep and in parts the river was less than 5m wide. I spent a lot of the time scraping the bottom of the river with my boat and my paddle was hitting the ground with near every stroke. On numerous occasions I got completely beached and had to punt my way forward with my paddle in the sand. I had to go against my instincts and paddle over logs and under fallen trees. After some time of this, the river eventually joined up with what ended up being the other branch and became a massive wide river again. Crazy.

Around 2pm I decided I had done enough paddling. I knew there was a national park, the Murray Valley Regional Park, around the 35km mark. I got out a couple of times to find a good spot to put up a tent (clear of trees) and eventually found a nice spot on top of a high back with some little log stairs going up to it. The mud beach that I parked the kayak on was nice and solid, so it was the perfect spot. I am noticing (and getting reports form other paddlers) that the banks are getting very muddy and squishy. I experienced that a couple of times today, so my booties and the inside of my kayak are a bit muddy and wet now.

I saw lots of animals today. The first animal was a very curious fox, that trotted down the side of the river next to me. There were the usual cows and plenty of goats watching me go by. I also had my first snake experience around lunch time. A red belly black snake started swimming straight at me, so I had to jam on the brakes and it continued across the river and up onto the bank. There are also lots of kangaroos crashing around in the bush near my campsite.

Today I began the audio book of Sir David Attenborough’s called “A Life on Our Planet”. It is all about the impact humans have had on the environment and animal species. So it was no wonder that I started seeing parallels with what he was talking about and what is going on with the Murray River. It was kind of sad to see the impact humans have on this river by just turning the tap on and off (it is probably a button). Basically they decided they are closing the river for the winter and they just turn it pretty much off.

Tomorrow I have about 35km to get to Yarrawonga. I have a bit of winding down the river to do first and then paddling across Lake Mulwala. Yarrawonga has a weir that you need to walk around, so I have a bit of a portage tomorrow afternoon (about 1.5km through town) to the caravan park which is at the bottom of the weir.

From: Doolans Bend
To: Corowa
Distance: 60km
Distance to Go: 2080km

“I haven’t ever seen it this low”… If I hear that from a local again I think I will cry. I think I talked to about 5 people today, all of who were amazed at how low it was. Not only is it incredibly low it is also really slow. So today was another long day of solid paddling.

It was always going to be another epically long day, with 56km to cover in order to get to Corowa. I deliberately got on the water just before sunrise in order to maximise the number hours of daylight I would have. Unfortunately, once I was on the water, it took me a while to get motivated to actually start paddling. However, I put on an audio book and quickly got into “the zone”.

I did soon realise my body was tired and it wasn’t long until my lower back started to ache. By lunch time it was getting really sore and I was doing a lot of squirming in my seat to try to get comfortable. At lunchtime I took an anti-inflammatory and shoved a sponge between my lower back and the back of my seat which seemed to do the trick and my back was much better for the afternoon.

I actually don’t really remember much of the paddle today because I got so engrossed in the book I was listening to. So I will write about that instead. The book was one I had never read, but is apparently a classic, called “My Side of the Mountain” by Jean Craighead George. It was written in the 1950s and is actually aimed at children, but it is a great story and good for adults too. It is about a boy who runs away from home to go and live in the forest in the Catskill Mountains in New York. It is just a nice story of adventure and what it is like to live off the land and survive in the wild. It is a bit like a sanitised version of “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer (with a much happier ending). Thanks Paul for recommending this to me the other day.

So after 9 hours of listening to my book (and paddling), I eventually arrived in Corowa at around 4pm. I am staying at the Corowa Caravan Park tonight. Unfortunately the boat ramp at the park was about a metre above the waterline, so I had to unpack all the gear and carry the boat out of the water. As I was walking up to reception to check in, Ed, the owner of the park appeared in his car with an empty trailer to give me a ride to the other end of the park. He had done the same for Amy, one of the other paddlers on the Murray, a couple of weeks ago. He was so keen to help, but I had to explain that one of the rules I have set for my journey is that I have to walk (with my kayak) if I am not paddling it.

Speaking of Amy, she took a photo of the boat ramp (with Ed standing on it) when she was here. Here is that photo and what it looks like today. Just a slight difference.

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You can view Amy’s videos on her YouTube channel “Amy Outdoors”

After checking in and dumping my gear, I walked into town to find that pretty much everything was closed (being a Sunday night in a country town), so I settled for a burger and milkshake at the local take away.

Tomorrow was planned to be another 50+ kilometre day, followed by a 20km day across Lake Mulwala to Yarrawonga the following day. I had structured it this way because I wanted give myself a shorter distance for the lake crossing as it would not have any flow to assist. However, since there is basically no flow on the river now, I am going re-adjust things to make the two days a little bit more even. So I will probably will end up camping somewhere near the Collendina State Forest tomorrow night.