Going Solo

‘The showers are so powerful they’ll knock you on your arse,’ grins Garry, a middle-heavy man with tattoos so distasteful it’s a wonder he has a wife. This is of no concern to me, though, as his news about the shower has made me a happy man. If I could have run to the washroom I would have, but I’d paddled fifty kilometres without stepping out of my boat, and the legs were strangely numb.

I’m at Picnic Point, two days upstream of Echuca, four days downstream of Yarrawonga. It is the Melbourne Cup in a couple of days, which means the first long weekend of the summer. Silly season has taken hold, the hair let down, the 4WD put into action, the banks of the Murray even in the most remote of locations are teeming with celebrating graduates, grey nomads, petrol heads. Oh, so many petrol heads. There is no sound but for kookaburras, sulphur crested cockatoos, the occasional Red Gum branch being shed. The Murray is calm, glassy, my home. And then a speed boat thrashes around a bend, kicking up a series of one and a half foot wakes. The driver nods at me, then speeds up, I grit my teeth and ride the waves. Seconds later three motorbikes hit the trail, a chain-saw cacophony and blurry whizzing two-wheelers dodging the trees at 90kmph. The peace has been broken, and just when I think I’ve noted all extra-curricular middle-of-nowhere activities, I paddle past a battered but well-loved old van beside which there is a young man with dreadlocks playing a full drum kit, amp attached, wonton gladness upon his face. I have to admit, a smile appeared. He yelled at me, ‘I paddled the river between Albury and Waikerie!’

‘Lazy!’ I replied, but paddled back up to meet him and his friend. Jared and Brad were out here doing what they loved. Getting away, playing music, fishing, waiting for the next skate park. Remarkably they’d been in Warnambool on Victoria’s south coast when I skated through in November 2006, and although they didn’t catch me they were confronted by members of my crew, brandishing leaflets and donation buckets. Jared tells me about his trip along the Murray last year, noting how the levels are higher this time around. ‘My boat split with the weight,’ he said, ‘I was taping it up all the way, then I nearly drowned. I came out of the boat and it drifted off, so I tried to swim after it but I can’t even doggy paddle. I went down, all went black, and I woke up on the bank spluttering and coughing.’
‘You’re a lucky boy,’ I said.
‘I am,’ he looks around, ‘this is a cool spot, eh?’

I’ve been paddling alone for four days. Gael was bound to return to France and waved me off on Tuesday with several members of the Yarrawonga Canoe Club, and Noel Wright, who with his wife Helen has accommodated us since we arrived in the area. The club had rustled up some paddlers to help me celebrate my 30th two days earlier, and then a BBQ followed, an enormous cake was brought forth and upon it were the words Happy Birthday Davey Bear. I resolved to have words with the culprit at a later date. The evening made up for the rest of the day, which was tough not just for the headwind and minimal flow, but because a wakeboarding boat tossed up two foot waves that broke over us, filling our boats and confirming that without a motor we are little more than fodder for these creatures. A prominent lack of respect becomes evident as we move along, our jolly waves to some camps on the bank are not returned, it is as if we’re intruding. Everybody is thinking ‘this is My Murray, how dare they come here with their alternative form of transport and happy smiles. Let me be here in silence, let me enjoy my fishing, my beer, let me rest my arms at my side without having to lift one in greeting. Oh the cheek!’

Yarrawonga is another border town, its New South Wales counterpart being Mulwala, namesake of the lake that dominates the area. Yarrawonga Wier was finished in 1939, creating a flood of backwater and another lake littered with the spinal corpses of trees. Lake Mulwala is the second chain of Australia’s largest irrigation system, and as Gael and I paddled across I realise that although Mulwala resembles Lake Hume, there is a sense of understanding that for all of man’s dabbling the existence of this lake is a necessity. Without it, the last ten years of drought would perhaps have left a string of dry river beds. I haven’t heard the South Australian argument yet and I’m barely a quarter through this journey so have little of value to say for now, but regulation seems to ensure there is always water in the river. It may not flow at points, it may not rise to the levels of yesteryear, but there is water. If the weirs weren’t here and the Murray ran dry in drought, what would the voices of the food bowl of Australia say then? What is for sure is that the Murray is loved and the locals here are saying that it’s looking better than it has for some time.

On my second day of solo paddling I packed up camp on one of the fine sandy beaches that glorify this stretch of the Murray, then pushed off, gazed up at the trees in hope of seeing my first koala, and promptly hit a snag that turned my boat over before I could say oh bugger. I had to time to think it, but by then I was wet. Instinct took hold, I became ninja, simultaneously righting Nala and grabbing at objects that had been stashed behind my seat in the cockpit. 50 metres from the bank and in 4kmph flow, I sat sideways in a sloshing boat and gently paddled to shore. All was saved, except my dignity and my SLR’s zoom lens which was close-at-hand in case of wildlife sightings. That I’d happened to reach land at just the point where a ruddy great snake was slithering around barely registered so keen I was to protect my kit. The snake disappeared before I had time to stroke it, and as I shovelled the water out of Nala’s soggy centre I realised that yes, I’d lost a lens, but that the rest of my kit was in good hands. The dry bags within which much of my stuff is bound did their job. And even after a good dunking there was no seeping into the kayak’s stows. It was a hard lesson to learn and one that until the next big town will ensure that all stills will lack precision, I shall be more wary of snags from now on.

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