Below the Dam

I just trod on a possum. Would you believe, in three previous visits to Australia I’d only once seen a possum, but on this little shindig five or six have crossed my path. Correction: I’ve seen a handful, but only one has crossed my path, it happened tonight and I trod on its tail. They shriek, bark even, sounds like a giant tree trunk is being ripped in two. Suffice it to say in the darkness of the Corowa night I wasn’t far off vacating myself.

There is something about travelling along The Murray River. On the one paddle you see the country from a privileged and often quiet, undisturbed perspective. Wildlife abound, other humans are rare outside towns. But you’re effectively in a valley, sheltered on both sides by high river banks, now dry and red and parched. Up above them is a different world, one well trodden, but that outside world is not sufficient for the time being. My distances are measured in bends, they say one road kilometre equals three river kilometres, the crow laughs at me as it flies and the only indicators of true distance are my GPS and the blue rectangles every 2km, counting down the distance to the mouth.

But I’m speeding ahead. One week ago Peter and Tim left Gael and I to fend for ourselves. We have managed quite well, the kindness of strangers typically playing a part. Wondering just how the heck we were going to get our kayaks over the Hume Dam, we met Tim Tanner, who just happens to run the Dam. He had a trailer too, so up and over we went, and took a peek inside the Dam for good measure. Here, the River Murray is condensed into a three foot diameter pipe. Of course, seventy kilometres ago the Murray was diluted in amongst Lake Hume so it is the water of the Lake that emerges from one of three Dam pipes on this Saturday morning, then sprays its way in a fifteen metre arc into a river that is unrecognisable from the one we paddles just two days earlier. We have gone from Alpine to Tropical in one foul…lake.

Characteristically the Murray is a slow river, but we had been spoilt between Biggara and Lake Hume, the flow now isn’t offered by Mother Nature, it is split and cut and science dictates the river speed, volume and capacity. On this day 1700 mega litres of water are being released from Lake Hume into the Murray. A mega litre is 100m squared by 1m deep, an impressive image, and at its maximum the Hume Dam is able to release up to 40,000 mega litres. Thing is, that rarely happens. Tim explains to Gael and I that without the Hume the Murray would have run dry long ago. Without wiers, dams and lakes to regulate the water system Australia’s drought would have seen water run through the system unabashed, then neglected to give it any more. In my naiveté I decided to paddle the Murray at this time of year not to get away from the English winter, but because I thought the Murray would be benefiting from late Winter flows. Above the Hume it is, but below it would actually be much faster in late summer, when water is being released to the lower levels to aid irrigation through the tough hot months.


What is for sure is that as soon as our kayaks entered the water Gael and I were in new territory, the Murray below the Hume is far different from the one below it. Immediately wide, a trickle of flow, muddy, still-feeling water. And shallow. Three times in that day to Albury I beached myself. Like a whale, floundering around on my yellow, overloaded Titanic. There I am in the middle of the Murray pulling Nala off a sandbank; low water levels or poor navigation? Give me time to judge.

Turtles become a regular sight, hourly, at least. The sun is out down here, not rainy and cloudy and threatening of storm. The turtles are sun baking on the hundreds of fallen trees, and down here they’re timid, too. The merest glance of one of our flashing white paddles and they’re gone, sploshing their way towards the safety of the underwater. Pelicans strut, cormorants swoop, rainbow bee eaters wing their way around in tight circles. It’s like paddling through a giant zoo. How this zoo’s water supply is to be maintained as the river winds on, though, remains to be seen.

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