Rivers Paddled:
Eucumbene (Kiandara to Lake Eucumbene) - Good level, very cold and snowing!
Snowy (Munyang powerstation to Island Bend) - Big water, great river, what a ride!!
Thredbo (Village to Ngarigo) - Good, with the little extra water we always ask for!
Murray Gates - Great section of whitewater, long cold flat paddle home and even longer wait in the rain for the cars!
Mitta Mitta (Jokers Section) - Cold, Very Cold, but good walk out.
Bundara - The end of my trusty Diesel, and a 30 minute walk out over the ridge
Cobungra - Early start, in time to get to Melbourne, 3C. Running a grade 4 creek in a untried boat was always going to be tricky, great river and rapids as always. Level 0.3m on bridge gauge.
The moor's of Scotland, or the bridge at Kiandra? - Eucumbene put in.
Smells like a portage, Grade 5 on Snowy Munyang section
5 cold paddlers, huddling at a dairy, waiting out of the hail for the shuttle.
Snow overnight on our tents at Anglers rest.
Snow on my boat..
The view I had while carrying my boat out of the Bundar, after putting a 30cm crack in it!Cold plastic and rocks don't mix!
Jiri and Tim on small waterfall - Cobungra
then on to Tassie by Ferry..
Tassiemania Safari (The Lea Race and Cataract Gorge)
By Tim (and Andrew)
“Tim, you know what’s slowing us down?” Said Andrew while dragging his boat up the bank after the first run down the Lea River in Tasmania.
“I think it might be the foot long crack in your boat and us stopping after ever drop to empty it”, I replied.
“No, that’s not it – we don’t have enough stickers on our helmets, boats and paddles – that’s the problem” he countered rather matter of factly.
Looking around, Andrew was right. We were definitely the odd ones out…TEVA, Outdoorplay, Sweet, and Oakley stickers on every bit of gear you could see. But this wasn’t the only reason we weren’t fitting in. It didn’t help that we hadn’t represented Australia and had no Olympic medals to show. We didn’t have cool nicknames, like Bugga, Swazi or Mullet either. But we had Emma. She knew everyone, and introduced us to some fantastic paddlers who took the time to show us down the Lea Creek twice. It was a shock to us how good some of the paddlers were, no longer was it good enough to simply ‘boof’ a drop and land flat-ish. You had to boof halfway down a rockslide at an angle making sure to twist your boat 90 degrees in the air and land in the tiny pool only just longer than the boat.
The Lea River is a small creek in the North of Tassie, where around 60 boaters gather each year for a Grade 4 creek race. Unfortunately this year, even after the wettest winter on record, 3 weeks of no rain had reduced the Lea to just a trickle, flowing over some very steep drops aptly named Screaming’ Plastic Surgeon’s and Proctologists Twist. You could still get down it, the drops were good, but it was a scrape and grind the rest of the way.
After two practise runs, and no chance of racing with Andrew’s leaking boat, we withdrew from the race. Emma soldiered on, found a new partner to replace injured Susie, raced, then went back for another run! Andrew and I decided to hike up the nearby Mount Roland instead.
Top of Mount Roland (been here before in XPD,At the awards ceremony that night Emma and Carol (her race partner) took out first place in the women’s pairs – which is an excellent result given the quality of paddlers around! Then it was the afterparty, which left a couple of us bleary eyed the next morning with tall tales of tequila and goon boxes under the tables.
But that didn’t stop us from heading to Launceston for the 10am promised water release down the Cataract Gorge. The Cataract, we were told, was a big water grade 4/5 river amongst the best in Australia. Emma met two Tassie paddlers for us - Dan and Tim - and we headed nervously down to the banks. Once on the water, Dan casually mentioned that he had to be at the Australian team wildwater training session on the last rapid in half an hour, so we should just follow him and paddle hard.
I stuck to Dan like glue, while Andrew fell in just behind (in his poorly fixed boat filling with water). The rapids where big, bouncy, with massive holes, must make boofs, and always a brief description at the top before we headed down, something like. “Start right then head left, when you see the gnarly rocks head back to centre and get ready to boof the last drop..ok?”. There was no scouting from the bank, just some frantic paddling and brilliant rapids.
About half way down the run we came to an island with a grade 5 on the right and some creeky grade 3 on the left. Unable to convince the other 3 of us to go right, Dan went that way solo while our second leader, Tim, with a headache from the party the night before gladly took us down the chicken shoot option around the left of the island.
A calmer section of Cataract George - TassieThe last rapid, called the Slalom Rapid, was pure chaos. There were kayakers all over the river this day and a nervous looking bunch got into the middle of our group as we broke out into the rapid, creating a string 9 long, each separated by a few metres at most. From the back Andrew saw me going down backwards into a hole, following Tim, who was upside down, while one of the intruding kayakers showed him the line nicely despite being in the capsized position all while battling the towering waves, sharp rocks and massive holes!
Head Cam of Cataract George (not mine, but at a similar level) http://vimeo.com/3342829
All too soon we were on the flat, taking our boats out, almost in the middle of Launceston town centre! Discussions were held during the Safari about rating rivers out of 10…..Andrew rated Cataract as close to a 10 as he has experienced. An incredible, inspiring end to a great week!
4 boats, 1 car, no problem - travelling kayaker style..
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