We awoke to better weather than expected but still with wet tents and slightly lethargic sandflies, then ate breakfast on the holiday park's excellent riverside patio as we examined aerial imagery of the river on our phones. Even though we had thoroughly scouted the 11.5 mile section of river from Owen Tavern to the holiday park (at 45 cumec/1600 cfs) the previous day and there were only very minor features that we could anticipate well in advance (perfect mellow training run), Lara was still feeling quite anxious about getting on the water with her limited whitewater experience. We drove up the valley to the Owen Tavern campground, which was a pleasant and quiet grassy spot to set up right next to the river. We got in our packrafts and I talked her through signals and maneuvers, and we started with some ferrying and eddy catching to build some confidence. Generally the river moved nicely in a pool-riffle style with the rapids visible enough that I could boat scout and announce the best lines to take. Only once or twice did I need to get out of my boat to be completely sure of our line, something I would not have done solo. At Claybank we pulled into a small eddy that we had scouted before to demonstrate that the river was less scary (and we were more maneuverable) than when we scouted the previous day. I don't think Lara ever fully relaxed but she did quickly get the hang of it and had no real issues.
The water was beautiful blue-greens and wonderfully clear. The weather had moody clouds and the water was a pleasant temperature. The river cut through some interesting sedimentary gorge sections that were surprisingly scenic for a roadside run. Waterfalls and tributaries joined at intervals. The whitewater was engaging but very low risk with minimal hazards. The trickiest rapids were some that T-ed into corners but we soon got the hang of those. We stopped for a snack and then looked for some Miocene leaf fossils just downstream of Nuggety Creek Bridge, finding many excellent examples. Particularly neat was that some modern native plants nearby seemed to be close relatives of these 10 million year old leaves and Lara could identify some of the likely species. The following photos are an amalgam of those I took the previous afternoon when scouting and fossil hunting and on our river stop.
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| From the Nuggety Creek Bridge looking towards the fossil site |
We continued on after our fossil stop. Generally the river gradient was decreasing and the rapids were becoming more straightforward as we progressed. The river continued to have some nice gorge sections past the highway bridge with a couple waterfalls and some nice sculpted rocks. The minor (but most notable of the run) rapid at Mangles seemed slow to arrive but when it did it arrived quick and rather than our plan we improvised and Lara ended up running the sneak route with no issues. From here on it was a mellow float and lots of active paddling to arrive back at the holiday park.
I quickly got out of my drysuit and left Lara to sort and dry gear in the nice sun as I walked the 800 ft up to the highway to hitch a ride. It was a perfect hitch spot with two long turns in the highway coming out of Murchison such that I was quite visible and there was a nice long turn lane and wide shoulder was I was. I had my split paddle to further illustrate the purpose of the hitch and suggest that it would not be far. Within the first 5 minutes or so a nice St Arnaud bloke stopped and gave me a ride right to the Owen Tavern (we had nice chats about the river, DOC, and the Alpine Fault on our short drive). Effortless! I grabbed the car, returned to Lara and we sorted our wet didymo gear from the rest then piled into the car. After a stop in Westport for groceries (rainy!), we drove up to the Charleston Cave Base for a dry place to stay before we ventured into the Oparara the following day. I rather enjoyed our impromptu river trip and was glad to get Lara in her packraft in some whitewater.
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