Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 34 Mildura to Wentworth Nov 18

Mildura to Wentworth

Anna joins me - Long meanders - Dunes - Cowanna Bend - Royal Hotel

Today was the first day paddling with my daughter Anna. She has decided to join me for the 320 km stretch from Mildura to Renmark. Many say this is the quietest stretch of the river - at least from Wentworth down. It begins with the ancient rolling sand hills of the mallee, alternating with river flats and ends in the tall limestone cliffs of the Murray Gorge region.

The day began with a short chat with the captain of the PS Rothbury, who brought us up to speed on navigating the Mildura Weir. “It is easy”, he said, “there isn’t one - it’s been removed”. Mildura is the only weir on the river still on rails. Torrumbarry Weir used to be like this too, until a new type was built with gates that can be raised in the 1990’s. When the river rises weirs like Mildura can be pulled out of the river and replaced once it falls again. So there was no weir drop to worry about and with the level being the same on either side of where the weir used to be, there was no need to use the lock. As we passed the downstream side of the lock, we saw a team of workmen motoring slowly through the weir garden. No doubt they were inspecting infrastructure, but it just looked like they were having a good time and didn’t want to rush to get back to the office. It was the last boat we were to see for the day. There was no-one on the water for the next 50 km.

The biggest change between today’s river and that of the days before was the bends. Six to ten km long bends became the norm. Around Echuca, where I come from, if the river does not take a corner within a kilometre, we call that a long straight and there are legends about the winds that can blow along them and the battles we’ve had against them. Here we would be laughed at. The river runs in its ancient bed. No meanders within the meanders. This is the ancient river. How old must these banks be?
Around 15 kilometres downstream of Mildura we came across Mildara winery. Mildara is set at the top of a high sandstone cliff. The kind of formations built when the inland seas of 30 million years ago dried up and the sandy sediments were blown into big rolling dunes. Real mallee and gold once you put water onto it. The winery had built a solid set of steps from the top of the dune down to the foreshore where a barbecue was available for staff and visitors on the river bank. The effort put into making the steps was typical of the approach the Mildura community has put into making the river accessible to all. There are roads, picnic places, fences and a walking track which ran for at least 20 kilometres. The river charts we use suggest that this part of a whole Murray River walking trail. What a great thing that would be.

After 26 km we came across Cowanna Bend. This place was special. Cut off by an ever more permanent river cutting, it is virtually an island and by the looks of things, one on which there is no livestock. The diversity and richness of the understory was greater than any place I’ve seen on the Murray so far. I have been used to seeing black box woodlands with either saltbush, or grass, not the intricately patterned wilderness I was seeing here. The trees seemed healthy and wild, tangles of branches and thick canopies of leaves. Beyond the face of the forest, it appeared mythical and untamed. We drifted past this semi-flooded landscape, watching soaking in. On the NSW side were the communities of Coomealla, Dareton and Tucker’s creek. Houses set on high ground, or built on man-made islands of soil - the contrast could not have been greater. There was even a golf course around which people scooted in electric cars. Were they aware of the treasure across the river from them?
To get to Wentworth from Victoria you have to drive over two bridges. One at Abbotsford over the Murray and another over the Darling at Wentworth itself. Abbotsford Bridge is a single lane span lift bridge, designed to let the paddle steamers through. There were gates with stop signs either side of the span, which stopped the traffic when the span was about to be lifted. Wentworth Bridge uses hydraulics to lift its central span. No other bridge on the Murray has the same mechanism. Being between two major rivers, Wentworth is prone to floods. In 1956 when flood waters came down both the Darling and the Murray the town was only saved by the efforts of its farmers and the little grey ferguson tractors. The huge levee they built still surrounds the town, protecting it from future floods. The caravan park we are staying in is outside of that levee. Its vans and cabins are gradually being moved onto higher ground to avoid the rising river.

In the park, and later in the Royal Hotel we got to know two couples who were travelling around Australia. Both had spent the last three days kayaking on the rivers and exploring the streams and billabongs in the area. They too had explored amongst the flooded gums, seen kangaroos hopping to high ground, marvelled at the ancient trees and enjoyed the birdlife as their kayaks glid quietly through the trees.

I think Anna particularly enjoyed this aspect of the day. She photographed many birds, even a nesting tawny frogmouth. How she saw it I do not know. For me, having company was novel and refreshing. That company being my own daughter was special.

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Anna photographing a tawny frogmouth in an overhanging tree

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The rat is allowed to ride on the outside today, because we've got company. My daughter Anna has joined me for the 350 or so km to Renmark.

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Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 31 Karadoc to Mildura Nov 16

Mildura 885 km

Super moon - Alan - Gol Gol - Tree health - Bottle Bend

The evening had been a bright one. There had been a ‘super moon’, an exceptionally large full moon. I had watched it rise through the trees and it had lit my tent throughout the night. When I awoke the excitement of people and the urgency of conversations from the night before were but memories. I like that about mornings, there is calm. I packed, keen to be out on the water in the crisp morning light and to be in Mildura around midday, I had not taken much into my tent that night, so packing was easy. I was almost done when I saw Alan, from the cottage next door moving around. He offered me a cup of coffee and breakfast which I gladly accepted. Whilst sitting in Alan’s lounge chairs under his open veranda, overlooking the river, Alan told me more about his life, about his life in a small country town in the Mallee and of one of his adventures, a trip across the Simpson Desert, along the French Line between Dalhousie Springs and Birdsville in Little Grey Ferguson Tractors. He was the support mechanic. Steak and eggs was a luxury. Bryan the musician, who had left a copy of a song he had written about the Murray in my boat, turned up and accepted the offer of a coffee. Within the next ten minutes, the whole community seemed to be gathered around Alan’s fireplace. Subs, who owned the house boat they look after came down with a copy of the weekly newspaper. It had an article on blackwater he wanted to share with me. Accepting the offer of a cup of coffee before going off to work, he told me of his plans to take his houseboat up the Darling River next year. He would keep me informed. I was moved by the sense of community, support and care these river people showed each other and how they had taken me into it. Pushing off, I nosed the current into the fast flowing stream and was soon on my way again.

It was not long before I began to come across residential homes of Gol Gol. Stately homes, with landscaped gardens and terraced river frontages: a contrast to my hosts, simple accommodation. Some of the big trees which lined the river bank had been knocked over in the strong winds of the storm the previous week and were still in the process of being cleaned up. You could see the effect the weir pool had on their roots. Red gum roots will not enter permanent water, but form a layer above it. Where water is at a permanent high level, or young saplings grow on beaches their roots form a intertwined plate rather than penetrate deep into the soil. It is this plate that they balance on, but whilst they do not lack for water, they are vulnerable to falling over in high winds. The smooth water reflected the sky giving it a blue colour in my photos. In reality, it was the colour of dark tea from the tannins that had leached into it from organic material picked up from the forest.

Large areas of black box and river red gum were in the poorest condition of any I have seen on my paddle so far. They even seemed worse than after the millennium drought (the fifteen years of below average rainfall that finished in 2011) when I did my last paddle. Why had this section of the river been particularly hard hit and why had it taken so long to recover? I estimated from the branches of the dead trees that at one time 75% of the forest floor would have been shaded by black box; now it was more like 15%. Even if you accept drought as natural and its effect on trees as a natural thinning event, where the fittest and those in the best positions survive, it was still shocking. Along the river’s edge the red gums had also suffered. On some stretches one in three old trees had died and more had lost strength, cut back to a few young sapling-like branches which had grown since the drought broke 5 years ago. The root systems must cut back too. To be healthy, they need to be fed sugars from photosynthesis in the leaves. When I worked as a landscape gardener, we had a rule of thumb. Actually it had to do with replanting bushes and trees from one place to another. It was that the roots of a plant are as extensive as its foliage. What you see above the ground is what there is below the ground. When we dug out a bush we trimmed back its foliage to maintain a healthy balance. The leaf mass on these trees was only enough to support a tiny root system. With fungi attacking the abandoned roots and so little resources for such big trees, it’s no wonder they take so long to re-establish and no wonder that the younger trees show more vigour. All the more respect to those forest giants that manage to rebuild the spreading crowns that river red gum are famous for. If those trees die, it will be a hundred years before the river is lined with majestic gums again. It will not be something we see again in our lifetimes. I prayed for more good years and that we find a way and the will to help them recover.

Right at the beginning of my paddle, I took a detour into Bottle Bend. This billabong is infamous for having become highly acidic in the drought. People often comment on the smell of murray mud. It has its own peculiar smell. Living thing is the Murray get their energy from organic matter. Some is washed down from the mountain catchments, but in a long river like the Murray this is soon consumed. Some is produced by vegetation along the banks, this is one reason why overhanging trees and areas of reeds and rushes are so important - particularly if you like fishing, or observing birdlife. And some is brought into the river from the forests following floods. This organic matter supports a food chain that begins with micro-organisms that break it down, waterbeds and mussels that filter feed on these, shrimps, frogs, platypus, fish, turtles and birds, as well as land animals and insects that depend on the river as a food source. All use oxygen, but deep in the mud where the oxygen cannot penetrate are micro-organisms which use the naturally existing sulphur from the soil. Under drying conditions this can form sulphide gases, which is what gives the mud its strong smell. In some situations, the sulphide produced by these organisms becomes sulphuric acid. This happened at Bottle Bend. The water was so acidic, it would have dissolved a car body. The little water that was in the billabong was pink. It killed everything it came into contact with. There was concern when the river rose in 2011 that it would kill fish in the river downstream. Luckily it was such a high river, that like the blackwater in most cases this year (so far), it was diluted by freshwater, limiting its effect. Paddling into Bottle Bend 5 years later, it now looked like any other billabong. Young trees lined its shores. The water had the same colour as everywhere else. It had recovered.

Approaching Mildura, I paddled alongside the majestic Mallee Cliffs, 20 to 30m high red cliffs where the river has cut into ancient sand hills, exposing the geological story of past climates and landscapes. A fringe of red gum and river coobah (river myall) grew from sediments which had eroded from its face, the fresh green fringe a contrast to the ancient rock behind them. Planes flew into Mildura airport and jet trails from the flight path between Europe and Australia criss-crossed the sky. I could hear the rumble of traffic in the distance. There is something exciting about coming into towns and cities when having been out in the bush for weeks. There is such a contrast between the two environments, but there are also people.

I found a spot in the Buronga Caravan Park on the NSW side of the river. That afternoon I met with three other source to sea paddlers, Tim Williams who completed the journey round 10 years ago, Kia James, one of the few women to do the journey solo and the legendary Mike Bremers who has paddled both the Bidgee and the Murray and had just come back from a stint exploring sections of the Darling River. We talked all afternoon, after which Mike and I moved on to the pub for dinner and a few beers, where we swapped tales long into the night. Finally a pub that was open (and had beer)!

Day 32 and Day 33 were rest days in Mildura (see calendar)

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River landscape near Karadoc

Video: Black box woodland near Mildura still recovering from drought