Murray River Kayak.

Day 13: 1124 to 1057 km to the sea: Robinvale - Wemen - Beach campsite.

Day 13: Friday 30/11

Robinvale - Wemen - Beach campsite.

River markers: 1124 to 1057 km from the sea.

Distance travelled today: 067km.

Total distance travelled: 655 km.

Approaching Euston Weir.

The cliffs are my companions once again. with each passing kilometre they get larger and more frequent.

Packing up and moving on from Robinvale was difficult this morning, not that I wanted to stay, but a days rest gives you a lot of time to think. Whilst it was good to rest the body, it allows self doubt to creep in. The best thing was to get going. Be systematic, be methodical.

There was a stiff breeze that morning, a left over from last nights storms as the weather change came through. The wind stirred up waves along the big sweeping bends which caused the boat to bounce a little as I paddled it out of Robinvale. What was no problem to my sea kayak would have sunk the TK2 (two man kayaks) that I have paddled so often in the past. It felt good to be in this boat. Today I would come across a ten kilometre bend and straights of this size are a feature of the lower Murray. When the wind blows down these straights, it can form white capped waves. The splashing through the waves this morning was just a taste of things to come.

Little black cormorants thrive on young European Carp.

...so does the greater cormoraunt

As usual, the trees were full of cormorants. I can't help thinking that the large numbers of cormorants are in response to the very many European carp I see all along the river and especially lunching at the riverbanks. The fishermen say that the local murray cod died of when the black water came down with the high rivers. Black water comes from when the river flows through the forest and picks up organic matter like leaves and twigs. Black water came from the Barmah-Millewa and Barham-Koondrook-Perricoota Forests. In the later, the water sat for over a year and its effects reached as far as Morgan. Microorganisms in the water then breakdown this sort of food and use up all the oxygen leaving none of the fish. Fishermen say is the big cod that die first because they live in the deepest holes where the least oxygen is. They say that around Echuca and higher in the river the Murray cod faired better because they could escape the black water by swimming up the rivers which flow into the Murray like the Campaspe and the Goulburn. When conditions improved they return to the river. Stocking of the river with fingerlings occurs here in Robinvale, in Euston and Echuca. They they take their time to grow and are too small to eat carp. In the meanwhile cormorants are filling the niche. I have never seen such large numbers and such happy cormorants.

Rock reefs are a feature of this area. This one and / or the island behind it is called 'Danger Island'.

The first stop this morning was the Euston Weir. This was the second weir I was to pass through on this trip. In around 40 minutes I had covered most of the 6 kilometres to the weir and gave the Weir Master a call. I asked him if it were possible that a expedition kayak could pass through the lock. He said that this would not be a problem and to let him know when I was there. Once I was 200 metres away I gave him a second call and he came down in his ute. The process began as usual with the opening of the upstream gate. As soon as it was open wide enough, I paddled through and into the large empty space within. We chatted whilst his assistant began to let the water in the lock out. The weir master's name was Ray McMaster. He had been at Euston Weir for 30 years and planned to retire this year. In all that time he had lived in a house provided by the department overlooking the river. He would have to move out. Ray had grown up and completed his schooling in Echuca and had known my father as a doctor in town from that time. He shared that only recently the P.S. Adelaide had passed through the lock on its way back to Echuca from the centenary celebrations in Mildura. It must have been a special moment to see her pass through. The locks were designed to support the river trade, but as they were built at the end of that era, their greatest use today is by pleasure craft. It would have been good to see the lock being used for the purpose it was designed for. Floating in the middle if the lock I felt small. As the downstream gates opened I thanked Ray and his assistant and paddled out into the choppy pressure waves downstream of the weir.

Euston - Robinvale Lock and Weir 15
Lock staff are available from 8am-4pm daily • Phone (03) 5026 4005

April 2011. Lock and Weir 15 underwater.

Reconstruction of the navigable pass section of Euston Weir, showing use of cofferdam, May 2011This photograph was taken after two of the four concrete half-height piers had been poured; the last two original steel trestles remain ready to be replaced. The steel cofferdam has been placed on the concrete base slab and pumped out to provide the contractor with a dry chamber for the next pier to be formed and poured. Work on the weir upgrade works and fishway construction resumed on 19 April 2011 when the flow dropped to 35,000 ML/d; on the day this photo was taken, the flow was around 22,000 ML/d. Works are currently scheduled for completion in mid-2012.

The weir is a simple one compared to Torrumbarry, constructed of barriers on rails which can be removed from the river during high rivers using a cable and winch. The barriers are on angles so that the water pressure pushes them into their rails along a concrete lip on the river bed. Most of the weirs on the river are like this. Torrumbarry was replaced with a more modern system of electronically operated gates after the river began to undermine the original construction. The other lockmasters think that Allan has it a bit too easy. In the two high rivers we have had over in the last 12 months, water flowed straight over the top of the weir at Euston. Going off the marks it had left on the poles beside the lock, it had been one metre higher than the top of the wall. Works were in progress to raise the wall but the high river had disrupted that twice. Ray said that they hoped to finish the improvements sometime next year. He said that each time the crews pulled out because they were unable to work in the conditions it cost another 1.2 million dollars. At the weirs you can find out how much water is flowing down the river. At Euston it is currently 12,500 megalitres per day. This compares with the flow around September of around 70 thousand mega metres. Although this seems like a lot of water, it pales in comparison with the 1993 floods 300,000 megalitres per day - you would not even have seen the weir because it was three metres under.

Unlike downstream of the Torrumbarry weir, the river still had quite a bit of flow and the banks were vegetated. The water level changes so much below Torrumbarry that nothing can grow. Here, the well watered vegetation and the tall red sandstone cliffs made it positively pretty.

It was nice to be on the way again. I concentrated on my technique, got the boat moving again and settled into the day. The first break would be at around 20km and lunch at 40. That was the plan.

Towards the end of the first 20 km, I snuck through a cutting. It was not a big one, saving only a kilometre, but short cuts are fun. There were a few snags, so I built up speed to improve my steering. Unlike in a car, when you turn in a boat that is also being driven by a current, you are actually bring driven sideways. The faster you go, the less of an issue this is. So, by going faster you can keep further away from the snags. In the process I bounced off a flat log that had not been visible underwater. Had I been in a fibreglass boat, this may have cracked the hull, particularly given that fully loaded my boat weighed about 180 kg.

Emerging from a cutting downstream of Euston Weir.

Two fishermen had moored their Boat at the place where the water from the cutting met the river once again. Places like this are popular with fishermen because the fish come to feed on whatever has been stirred up. They had caught a yellow belly so far, but everyone was practising for the opening of cod season tomorrow. There were fishermen everywhere. Their camps were on every decent bend, and in the good stretches, like behind Danger Island, it was not uncommon to find three or four boats. There were much fewer carp than upstream of the weir and the further I got the better it went. I wonder why?

The red cliffs are more frequent and taller with every passing kilometre.

At my 20 km break, I met Angus and Isaac, two young National Park Rangers who were driving along the river banks checking that campfires had not been left unattended and clearing the tracks of branches that had fallen as a result of last night's storm. For the next hour and a half we kept bumping into one another. At one place I passed them and suggested that this was because they liked talking to people too much. Angus said he just wanted to make me feel good.

I spent my lunch break lying on a log looking up into the canopy of a big old river red gum, watching swallows darting in and out of their nest as they returned again and again with the insects they had caught I the air. Their nest was in a hollow branch, formed in such a way as to give it a slight overhang. It seems that swallows prefer homes with a verandah. Murray Rosellas also chatted to each other high in the tree branches, but compared to the swallows it was as if everything they did was in slow motion.

Wemen: I was thinking of climbing this cliff for an icy pole and a big m,
but the lack of a place to pull up and the condition of the sign were not encouraging.

Are you my mother? Lunch break day 13.

Chill-laxing under shady tree. Ahhhhh. :)

It was difficult to find a camping site at the end of the day. All the good ones seemed to be taken by fishermen out in force to be 'there' for the opening of cod season. I must have paddled past at least 4 beaches - an extra five kilometres - and was getting tired. I pulled into one promising spot, but found it too unsafe. As I drifted down from this site, past a beautiful beach with a couple of groups of campers on it, one of them waved me over. This was the beginning of a fantastic evening. Rob and Phill from Bendigo took me in as their guest and showered me with food. Two lamb chops, potatoes, broccolini, pumpkin... and a couple of glasses of wine. They told jokes, hunting, camping and fishing stories, where the most incredible things happened, and they had a go at each other again and again. They thought what I was doing was great and wanted to show their support. Rob made double portions for me and was up early in the morning with a kettle of boiling water ready for a cuppa. Both had retired from high pressure jobs and had been coming to this beach for years. Phill described the Murray as the biggest pool in the world. Indeed they had spent much of the 45 degree day yesterday sitting in it. We watched the sky light up with a beautiful red and orange sunset and reflected on how important it is to get away from the everyday to realise what is important in life. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut they said.

Rob and Phill from Bendigo: homegrown philosophers and comedians at the best pool in the world.
If only we could hear the cricket!

Rob and Phill, two great blokes from Bendigo - who spoiled,
entertained and encouraged me and became friends.

It is not unusual for there to be a thunderstorm following a hot and humid day, and despite the red sky in the evening, we were not disappointed. From 11 until 1am lightening flashed around us. One, bright as day was followed by a crack of thunder that was so close that we all jumped in our sleeping bags. All the big brave men on the beach :). They are a wonderful thing, scary, but wonderful. I'm not sure for which if those two reasons, but I did not get much sleep that night.

Day 12: 1124 km to the sea: Robinvale - Rest Day.

Day 12: Thursday 20/11

Robinvale

River markers: 1124 km from the sea.

Distance travelled today: 0 km.

Total distance travelled: 588 km.

45 degrees today. Rest day.

This Southern Cross Wind Mill is said to be the largest in Australia.
It was used to supply the town of Robinvale with drinking water.

The original Bumbang Homestead.

Cuttle family picnic.

The Robinvale area was first settled by Europeans in 1847 when John Grant obtained a lease for the Bumbang Peninsula. The town gets its name from another early family, the Cuttles, whose son Robin was killed in a dog fight in the First World War at Villers-Bretonneux in France. The name if the town comes from vale Robin - in honour of Robin. There are strong connections with that town in France and Australia after more than 14,000 soldiers fell defending the town. The city of Melbourne paid for the first school to be built in the town following the war using funds raised by Australian school children's penny drives. Caix square in Robinvale and a Robinvale Square in Villers-Bretonneux. So it was I was only a little surprised when the first person spoke to in Robinvale was a French backpacker doing push-ups on the banks of the river. I also was not so taken aback when I met Aussies with strong Italian accents. This area was opened up for soldier settlement following the Second World War and many Italian post war migrants followed. Euston in NSW has a third generation Italian population from Calabria. However, turning into the main Street in search if a cold beer and counter meal I came across a happy group of confident young Japanese. At least three businesses in the main street were run by Vietnamese. All which did not fuss the locals.

Paddlesteamer at Robinvale in the 1920's.

Old truck in the Robinvale Rural History Museum. Note the difference in size of the crates and truck, as well as the level of comfort for the passengers between then and now. This would have been a pretty good truck in the 30's too, something to show off, or be envious of.

In going through the doors of the Australian icon I was looking for, I first had to pause and allow three big Tongans to take the final shots in a game of pool. Don't mess which a Tongan, they have arms like most people's thighs! For a moment I wondered whether I had made a wise choice, but their uncomplicated laughter and focus on their game and each other's reactions soon made me feel at ease. Two cold beers went down very well indeed whilst I waited for my food to be cooked by the English chef. Despite drinking 4 litres of water I was still dehydrated, so switched to water after that. The English chef, Chris, came from somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool, hated Melbourne, liked Adelaide and loved small Murray River towns. He lived above the pub and was happy here, but unsure how long he would stay. There WA no problem finding work as a chef once people found out a chef was in town. Problem was, if he did not watch out he ended up almost running the place. Chris cooked up the best mixed grill I have ever had. Bar man Greg organised a free desert; "everyone who paddles down the Murray gets a free desert". Of course being an Aussie counter meal, it came with chips - I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Robinvale Pub. Lovely mixed grill. With chips.

So, Tongans, Italians, Vietnamese, Greeks, Italians, increasingly more Iraqis and Somalis and a large indigenous community all in one ordinary looking Australian town of 4,000 inhabitants. Perhaps not so ordinary after all. Researching a little I found an article in the Age from 2002 which described Robinvale as an island of multiculturalism in Victoria. In this article, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/19/1019020708322.html, one of the residents, Susie Coucounaris, says that as a Greek she has never experienced racism in the town, "If something bad happened to one nationality the whole community feels the brunt. It's not like it was only a Vietnamese or a Tongan, it was one of us." There are two Tongan churches in town and 30 languages spoken by families in the local school. Quoting the Age article again, Jeannette Black is the granddaughter of the pastoralist Herbert Cuttle who first donated land to establish the town in honour of his son Robin, who died in World War I. Mrs Black has lived in the town for 50 years. She is proud of its cultural diversity, although it could never have been foreseen when the first soldiers settled decades ago. The pull factors are the year round availability of work on farms and the push factors are climate change driven sea level rises and the need of people to escape repressive regimes. Interestingly it is migrants and refugees who answer the labour shortage, hand picking crops is hard work and it is very hot here.

Sunnies repair. First drill hole with pointy bit of knife. Twirl a piece of electrical tape into string.
Tie knot. Bind tightly with more electrical tape.

The new bridge with the old one in the background. A good comparison. For all the nostalgia, there seems to have been good reason to replace it.

The old bridge at Robinvale. Now in a park in town.

Day 11: 1191 to 1124 km to the sea: Beach campsite - Robinvale

Day 11: Wednesday 28/11

Beach campsite - Robinvale

River markers: 1191 to 1124 km from the sea.

Distance travelled today: 67 km.

Total distance travelled: 588 km.

Sunrise at my beach campsite.

Last night I did not sleep well, the hot weather hung around like an old friend until I was too tired to cook. I snacked on nuts. Snacked is too polite. I ate heaps. By the evening, through the night and into the morning I felt like a walking tub of peanut butter. My mouth tasted of it, my breath smelt of it. Yuk!

Sunrise and ready for an early start - with a 40 deg day predicted.

With hot temperatures predicted again for today (39 degrees celsius) and very hot weather (45 degrees celsius) for Thursday, I decided to make for Robinvale and rest out the heat in a cabin. As usual this would also give me a chance to recharge my electronic devices and upload those photos which had so stubbornly reused to do so and had drained my battery power over the last few days. I was up before the dawn. The dawn chorus was quiet today. Perhaps the birds had sung themselves out in their screeching before the thunderstorm and their rejoicing in the luscious, rainforest like atmosphere afterwards. After having been lazy and suffered for it, I cooked a proper brekky. I like to have as big a brekky as I can to keep me going through the day. I haven packets of pre-mixed oats, milk powder, sugar and raisins which cook up to a filling porridge. The oats and raisins provide fibre and a source of slow releasing energy through the day. The sugar helps get me going. Over the past week or so, I have been having fried eggs with tomatoes and onions as well, which is delicious, but takes extra time to clean the pan. I was getting a bit sick of this heat and wanted to get off early, so today I tried boiling my eggs. To save the metho which I use as fuel for my trangia (camp stove) I popped them into the kettle which I was using to boil water for a cuppa. This gave me a chance to check whether they were still good. If they stand on end in the water, they are starting to get old and won't taste the freshest, if they float then they can't be trusted any more. They tasted great, but were quite a challenge to chase around the trangia lid. It was as though they did not want to be eaten. :)

My kayak's wake catchiing the sun's rays.

I have a fair share of dried instant meals, soups, noodle and rice mixes, as well as packaged, ready to go foods, like diced peaches in syrup, but my favourite foods are those that come in nature's packaging. Eggs, apples, bananas, tomatoes, avocados, carrots, onions, garlic and ginger. These are refreshing rewards during the day, or tasty additions to the evening meal. Added to the health benefits, they are also biodegradable, so I don't need to turn my boat into a floating rubbish bin.

I was packed and ready by dawn. Just time enough to photograph the morning light. The beach I was camped on was almost like an island. It had a little bit of river, like a stream separating it from the main beach and was covered by a scattering of young trees. It was amongst these that I had set up my tent. The perfect cracked and curling edges of the rich silt that the river had left on the beach told me that I was one of the first big living creatures on the island. Only a kangaroo had been there before.

When young trees emerge from a flood, many of their branches die. Many look for all intents and purposes, dead. However, as the rising sun shone through their skeletal frames, it reflected off young green shoots sprouting from the trunks. On closer inspection, these were covered in green St Andrews Cross insects, enjoying the sweet sap which the trees had stored in their roots all this time and were now using to help their young shoots grow. Invisible in normal daylight, a myriad of fine spider webs also became apparent. When I see the old river red gums, with their hollows and generous branches, home to so many things I often find myself thinking of the expression 'Tree of Life'. This morning I realised that the right to this name is not the exclusive right of old trees.

Getting closer to Robinvale, the banks are covered in forest once again.

Today's stretch was mostly forested, it did not take me through any towns. Again I saw no boats and only a few fishermen. As the day heated up there was good reason for people to be indoors, especially now that there is air conditioning. As a kid growing up in a small country town, I remember when air conditioners were a luxury. Not everyone had one and the ones that we had were not all that good. The local barber, Doughy Elliot, like so many others, used to put a sign up on his door, "Closed due to the heat. Gone down the river." And if you went down the river to look for him, you would find half of Echuca there. People had there favourite spots, the pontoon was where the teenagers hung out, swimming from one side of the river to the other to watch each other, or out to the passing paddle steamers, hoping to grab onto the rudder and get a free trip upstream and a refreshing float down. The paddle steamers used to gun it through this area, so grabbing hold of the rudder was some feat. Families would be at one of the many beaches, deck chairs in the water at the edge of the river and kids playing in the sand. Others used boats to enjoy the cooling breeze off the river. These days the pontoon is gone and although people still use the river to cool off, they also have their air conditioners and we constantly hear the warning, "stay out of the river" it is dangerous. It is dangerous, for sure, but you'd be a fool to ignore the beauty at our front doorstep. I hope to be able to share some of that beauty through my photos, amateur as they are.

Meilmann Station shearing shed.

Beach at Meilmann Station. Full of corellas.

At the 1174 kilometre mark I passed Meilmann Station. Like many isolated stations, it is its own community. It seemed as though each of the kids and their partners had built their own homes there, each in their own style. What caught my eye, however, was the old shearing shed,neither its corrugated iron chimney. Like the one I had seen a week earlier, this one also backed onto the river. Shearing is hot work. Unlike the other it was silent. I drifted past, enjoying the view, imagining what it would be like to live there, admiring their choose of ground high above the floods and listening to the corellas which had occupied the just as impressive beach on the other side of the river. The name 'Meilmann' was painted roughly, with a large broad brush on a water tank near to the river. Beside it a new pump hummed.

Not the oldest of stations, Meilmann was established in 1925 by the Gorman family. They still own the station, which in a time where properties change hands very often and especially between generations is quite something. The name Meilmann equates the local aboriginal word for 'place of many frogs'. Since 2001, Meilmann has also been producing wines. A Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon are available. They have a frog on their label. On their website, http://www.meilman.com.au/ the family show their pride in maintaining wildlife in the red gum forests and wetlands on their farm. I knew there was something that appealed to me about this place.

Snags in the cutting from the last photo, usually accompanied by strong currents as the river drops faster than if it went the long way.

The river was rising constantly now, not because of rain, or releases from upstream reserves, but because it was now under the influence of the Euston Weir. Euston is the neighbouring town to Robinvale, like Echuca-Moama, each is in its own state and the competition between those states even today, affects their history and psyche. It was hard to put a figure on it, but every 10 kilometres or so that I paddled the banks were about 40cm lower. This may not seem like much, but by the time I was in Robinvale the river had almost reached the top of the bank in places. Nothing like Torrumbarry mind you, where if a person was to sneeze the river would flow over the bank, but high never-the-less. The high river meant that the snags disappeared into the murky deep, but it also meant that with less current it was harder to spot them. I had a number of surprises as my boat passed over, or just by looming snags. The slower current meant less help and I pushed hard, careful, even in rest stops, to keep the boat moving. If my tail wash (the pressure waves that follow a boat) overtook me then I had stopped too long. The tail wash travels in both directions at half the speed that the boat was travelling when it made them. It is embarrassing to be passed by one's own tail wash. :). Like Echuca, the high water makes water skiing very attractive: The Robinvale-Euston Classic is Ski Racing Victoria's premier event http://www.waterskiracing.com/ and like the Southern 80 is also 80 kilometres long and brings tourism dollars to the town.

This beach was huge, and so inviting that I took a break under its cool shady trees. Near Robinvale.

Forest invading the beach.

Kangaroo footprints in the cracking river clay.

Since the current was slowing down, I was on the look out for any short cuts. I found one at 1169, a snaggy young cutting with lots of current (but nothing like Murphy's Island) that saved me 2 km. I took some photos of what it looked like on the river charts and in reality to share with those at home. I snuck through another, log hopping through its marsh like waters at 1155 to save another kilometre. This one did not really save time, but exploring these backwaters is fun and makes a change of pace from paddling on the big river. At the 1144 kilometre mark, a promising cutting turned out to be blocked by snags; even the water could hardly get through. I turned around and went out again, startling a few carp in the process who had been feeding in the warm shallow water. The biggest cutting, the pièce de résistance, was a cutting saving 10 kilometres just before Robinvale. By this time, in the heat of the early afternoon, anything that saved energy was welcome. I located Riverside Caravan Park just before the mammoth new bridge and pulled in.