Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 4 Eleonora Res Corowa to Collendina Forest u/s Taylors Bend Oct 19

Today I paddled from Eleanora Reserve to just upstream of Taylor's Bend, a distance of 41km. It involved taking 560 photos and 16 videos at predetermined points. By the end of the day I reckon I had seen enough trees. It is a magic stretch of river though, with a feeling of being in the wilderness when really you are not all that far from civilisation.

I loved seeing how people in Corowa enjoy the river. One family had a set of lights, a collection of bar stools and a slab bench, and above all of this, a sign saying "South Bank". There was the tree house made of a pallet, positioned precariously high in a tree and only a knotted rope ladder to get to it. There were house boats of every sort, except big, or professionally built... like they used to be. One, festooned with Australian flags, was called the "Frying Dutchman". Another was little more than rails and a roof supported in a leaning, wobbly way by a collection of plastic drums. Blokes sheds, complete with lawn mowers ready to go, faced the river. There would always be work to do in those sheds. A little downstream I came across "Wirra Wirra". It looked like a family camp, but had three shipping containers, a basketball hoop, a deck and a bocce field, surprisingly soared by the floods that occupied the area up until a week ago.

South Bank

In places parts of the high sandy banks had collapsed, exposing a fresh edge which rainbow bee-eaters found interesting. They nest in burrows in that kind of habitat. Everything has two sides, even erosion creates homes, habitat and diversity. They flew in arching circles, picking insects out of the air. Acrobatic masters, the insects stood no chance. They are also one of the most beautiful of Australia's birds. Look them up if you get a chance.

Further down the river I saw dollar birds, olive green in colour, but with red patches on their heads. They have a odd call, but an even more unusual way of flying. As the flap their wings they bend upwards like a piece of paper. The upward stroke is no better, causing the wings to bend the other way. The end effect is that they look like a creature from one of the original Mickey Mouse cartoons, where everything seems to be made of rubber. How they stay in the air I don't know.

There were some beautifully situated stations, always high above the floods. Families who have been here generations. Often all you see is a pump stand, or a shed and chairs marking the place to go on hot evenings. One of these tanks was high in an old dead tree. People don't put tanks on stands anymore, they use pressure pumps - but my guess is this one is not coming down.

I've noticed that tree health seems to sometimes be worse around towns and campsites. Often these are areas without development. They just happen to be nearby. The older trees in particular seem to be affected. Their branches die back and their crowns thin. They look like they are suffering from the effects of drought. Many of the trees that fall in the river were in that kind of condition, or look like they did not have many roots at all. I wonder if they are experiencing a form of root rot, either through direct contact (infected soil), or because something has reduced their ability to fight the naturally occurring ones. It's usually the older trees that show these symptoms, and this is also true for root rot. It's a puzzle. I'll keep looking and see if this pattern is consistent along the river.

With those few exceptions the forest are in excellent health. There is real diversity of age groups within the forest and everywhere regrow. The only thing that would help the trees develop to their full potential would be if they had more room. In changing over from a forest managed for its timber to one managed for tourism and biodiversity, we seem to have forgotten that what we are hoping to achieve takes nature hundreds and hundreds of years. If we want the forests with majestic gums, we might just have to help it a little. There are quite a few local foresters out there who could lend a hand, and at the same time it would represent an opportunity to learn from generations of experience.

In this confined section of the Murray, anabranches are common, some are little more than short cuts, but there were some significant ones today that seemed to rob the river of its flow. In particular the anabranch that leaves the river after Black Dog Creek. Cutting off at least 4 kilometres, its steeper gradient almost sent the rest of river backwards. Since I'm surveying the main channel, I avoided it (but unless you have local knowledge this is generally a good idea). The river changed almost instantly. With less flow, reeds and rushes colonised the edges of the river, narrowing it down to 20 metres in places (instead of the usual 80 - 100 metres around here). Bird life was closer. Everything was closer. Erosion was less, but it did not seem to stop the trees from falling. In one place two trees almost closed off the river. It is as pretty as the narrows, where the Murray flows between Barmah and Millewa Lakes, but is more gentle.

I made camp in a similarly high bank to the one I camped in last night. I found a place with enough of a ledge to pull my boat up onto and high enough to keep out of trouble should the river rise. The camp was worth the climb. Like last night, their was soft green grass on top and again, great views. I'll try and include some photos, though reception is pretty restricted out here.

Tomorrow I make for the edge if Lake Mulwala, before a crossing the next day.

Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 3 Howlong Common to Corowa Oct 18

The people of Howlong lead blessed lives. It is a quiet little town on the road to Corowa from Albury. I have the impression that more people pass through Howlong, than stop there and at least some of the locals prefer it that way. They have their patch of paradise, perched on the edge of the ancient high banks of a river that formed before humankind began to make its mark on the world. Below them the Murray snakes through forests and woodlands. It rises and falls in yearly rhythm, not interrupted by politics, war, or other things that happen on the telly. Howlong is a fisherman’s paradise. Most people have a tinny in the driveway. It does have a modest caravan park; not too big lest it attract a crowd. When the crowd still comes (to the relief of local business, I’m sure) the fishermen can retreat to Black Swan Anabranch, its their secret river. Howlong has two commons, Fig Tree Common and the Howlong Common. The first is a designated camping site, but you have to get through a fence first and it feels like private property. It is also not connected with the river as suggested on the Access Map of the area. for this reason I camped on the later.

Ancient Redgum on Howlong Common, where the traditional grazing of river flats by cattle still takes place.

I should have guessed that the area of land between the Murray and its anabranch would be full of billabongs. It was wet from the recent high river and teeming with insects. Midges that look like mosquitoes on protein powder skated across the water surface like dandelion seeds in the wind. Thankfully they did not bite and even the mosses did not bother me that much. What the common did have was the most majestic old river red gums, hundreds of years old, perfectly adapted to their environment. Each a survivor of changes we can only dream of. Normally I get excited when I find one of these trees in the forest, or along the rivers edge. The common is full of them. It is also full of cows - normally - their footprints were everywhere.

Leaving Howlong I entered into the forest again. My third day with no-one else on the river since Albury. At the Hume people had been keen to fish. In Albury some people even sunbathed on the banks. People went for walks. Since then silence. Nothing but the bird call and a sign: “Please don’t shoot our cats, they are our pets!”

Midges blanket the supports of a river camp.

Today was squally weather. As each group of clouds rolled in, dark and threatening, alarm cries rang through the forest. Cockies screeched. Then the wind would come, warning of the rain that followed and finally the rain. When it does rain on the river it is a relief, the wind decreases and the drops make individual splashes on the water. their circles, initially distinct, intersect and are lost in complexity when the downpour begins, blurring the line between air and water. The water seems to be jumping. In my boat I am well protected, spray deck, jacket and multiple warm layers beneath. I am enjoying being in the rain, like a kid with a new pair of gum boots. Water droplets collect on my camera lens, but I am able to splash them off. Thank God for waterproof cameras. After the rain the air is clear and the colours more crisp. The leaves of the red gums appear more green and their bark more colourful. The river has a tropical feel.

Wooden posts placed to reduce erosion of the river banks - no match for the river's currents.

The banks of the ancient river seem to come closer together as the day goes on. In Corowa they form a bottle-neck for the river, backing it up from the town’s original, the narrowest point. 20 kilometres from Howlong the river is beginning to spill over into its floodplain. There are a myriad of streams, minor cuttings where the river takes a short cut. They sound like little water walls. Larger ones are marked with warning signs and buoys, but they are all best avoided lest you become part of the log jams that inevitably hide within them.

River Gold.

In this flooded landscape I found a piece of paradise: River Gold. Just the I needed a break it was there. A real men's den. A fishing hut with style, even old sofas - though they had seen better days. The hut itself was more of an open shed. It had a slab table, a sink for cleaning fish, no drain, just the sink, more tables, chairs and three big bottles of bleach. Fixed to one of the supporting beams was an angled steel pipe with a hook on the end for hanging fish. Just down from the hut was a sign “Ron’s corner”, in memory of a departed mate. Downstream was its earlier cousin, a weatherboard hut of the same name, but now starting to fall apart.

Camp at Eleanora Reserve, near Corowa, at the top of the banks of an ancient and much broader Murray River within which the current river meanders.

I kept paddling through alternating forest and farming landscape until I reached my camp, a picturesque public fishing reserve named “Eleanora”. To get to it you have to paddle through the trees for a short way and then climb the bank to pitch your tent, but the views are worth it. The ancient river bank I’m camped on is that high I can look out into the tree canopy from my tent. Yellow gums grow on the slope down to the river and wildflowers all over the top. Its the closest thing to a meadow I have seen outside of the high country. The camp is also tree safe, which, given the wind and the number of trees that have fallen over recently, is a good thing.





Sun is forecast for the next few days. It will make a nice change. Should make for some good photos too. I wonder what the river will do below Corowa, whether its character changes, or it remains the same. Not long until the Ovens joins, and then there is Lake Mulwala.

Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 2 Dights Hill (d/s Albury) to Howlong Common Oct 17

The second day is often one of the most difficult days on a long journey like this. The tiredness from the first day kicks in making the challenges faced in the second even harder. It takes a couple of days to get your gear sorted as well. To find out what goes best where, particularly when you're using a different boat. This affects food and drink as well: if they're out of reach you don't do enough of either. Calling into the bank is the usual way around this; find a nice sandbar to stop at access gear, repack, have a stretch and move on. Post flood this is not as easy as it usually is. The river is still high by normal standards leaving the beaches covered. The tops of the banks are easy to get to, however most are still saturated and many are muddy. So tonight I am pretty drained. Two hours to eat my dinner. Couldn't take it in any faster. I hope race fitness kicks in tomorrow.

About to set off

 

The stretch between Dights Hill where I camped last night and Howlong is in many ways one of the most beautiful along the Murray. There are parts which are just as windy and fast as below the Hume and others where the river widens out and where you gain a glimpse the hills that border the valley through which it flows. There are numerous islands mid stream with luscious vegetation, prettyish kinds of little wildernesses, free from the footsteps of man or beast. There are numerous lagoons, billabongs and anabranches through which the river rushes having found an easier way. In other parts of the river these are usually short joining meanders which have worked their way together, however here they run for tens of kilometres. Where these features occur, the forest has a healthy diversity; river red gum are present as saplings, young trees, mature specimens and ancient guardians. Forests intersect with grazing land, forming a kind of landscape mosaic of cultural and environmental significance. In these landscapes the mature red gums don't seem to mind the cattle however where there are cattle there is little regeneration, resulting in a park like landscape.

River Guardians

I seemed to spend quite a bit of time today spinning in the middle of the river. This was not on purpose. Though I managed to miss the massive whirlpool just downstream of Dights Hill, where a 10 meter diameter section of the river spins and is visibly lower than the rest, I was caught in many lesser eddies and swirls of the current. This is what happens when you continually looking at the landscape through a camera. It is the canoeists equivalent of walking into street signs: rather embarrassing.

Sloan and Tonk!

The soft soil and strong winds meant that tree fall was an issue and campsites needed to be chosen carefully.

About 20 km from Howlong the river is suddenly flanked on one side by an eight meter high clay bank. Is the nearest thing that the Murray has resembling a cliff for the next 1000 km. It is a riddle to me why it is there, but there are clues to the answer on approaching Howlong. Whilst the hills that mark the edge of the Murray Valley have long since retreated from view, the valley through which the river flows seems to be narrowing at Howlong. In the course of the day the river has changed from flowing through a wide floodplain to the restricted valley. It seems a confusing thing to say as the river moves away from the mountains which are its source, until you realise that the valley through which the river is now restricted is the bed of a much, much larger ancient stream. It's massive 15m high banks are occasionally visible through the trees. It's on these ancient banks that most people build their houses and the reason why the old towns and farms are safe when the river rises. With floodwaters unable to spread out, the confined river floods easily, however those frequent floods and changing beds contribute to some of the healthiest forests along the entire river. Rarely will you see as magnificent old gums as in this section of the Murray.

Camp on Howlong Common: still damp from the floods and full of mossies!

Tonight the wind that has been my companion for most of the day has dropped. The skies are clear, a pleasant change from the storms of last night. I look forward to getting to know the river between Howlong and Corowa in more detail tomorrow, before meeting the Ovens River at the edge of Lake Mulwala the next day.

Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 1 Hume Dam to Dights Hill (d/s Albury) Oct 16

First day on the river in my paddle to the sea.

Hume Dam: ready to go.

There were times today where I thought I must be mad. Why am I doing this again? It hasn't gotten any easier, that is for sure. The truth is that living on the river and paddling the length of the Murray back in 2012, I thought I saw patterns of decline. The questions that have come out of that trip eventually morphed into this trip, the data gathering part of a PhD looking at the resilience of the river banks of the Murray River.

Where there is a will there is a way.

Food planning: each pile is one day's food.

Back in 2012, the millennium drought had come to an end, and much like now, there had been a high river and, in some areas, prolonged flooding. And yet the river red gums did not seem to be recovering. Was it climate change, collapsing banks, river regulation, or lack of natural flood events that was causing this? The jury is still out, but it makes for an excellent pub conversation. Everyone has an opinion, some insight, or some concern. What it does show is that the issue is important to people. Rivers are our lifeblood.

If I could identify patterns and back this up with evidence, then perhaps we could respond to and care for the river in a way that shows respect for its grandeur. I don't mean to argue against change, or for looking areas off from the public, but perhaps we could be more clever in how we run our river, support its recovery and use it in a way that does not degrade it.

Longitudinal studies like this are rare. They tend to cost a lot and tend to involve a fair degree of discomfort. Given this, I focussed on two things I really enjoy doing, canoeing and photography. I would create a photographic record of bank condition (with an emphasis on river red gums) from Lake Hume to Lake Alexandrina. It sounded good to me. Today I began to realise how hard it was, especially in the twisty, turny river that the Murray can be up here.

I decided to try and write a record of the journey. This is the first of those records. How it will differ from the last time I don't really know. For sanity's sake and out of interest I want to keep writing about the people I meet and the things I see. I would like to delve more into the history too.

These descriptions match the photos I have uploaded with this post.

Water being released from the Hume is all going through the hydro valves, causing a massive spray on the downstream side. The river has dropped about a meter and a half. Most of the banks are intact, though a lot of trees are down, their roots unable to hold the weight in the soft soil. Current is fast, helped by water draining back out of the billabongs and wetlands back into the river. I found a nice spot to camp on high ground just beneath Dights Hill, about 50 km downstream from the Hume. It is a grassy island, which remained above the high water level in the recent floods. it is also relatively free of trees, which, given the thunderstorms and wind gusts tonight is a good idea.

At the base of the Hume.

I have included a few shots from the day so that you can get a feel for what the river looks like post high water. The river varies from wide sedentary stretches to fast flowing channels around islands. It is a much more cultivated landscape than further down the river, with tall poplars and willows a feature of the area. The later, although initially stabilising the bank, eventually seem to strangle the gums. Trees nearest billabongs and floodplain mosaics seemed to be in the best condition, whilst those closest to Albury appeared to suffer the most. I can't explain this, as it was not always a question of how high above the water they grew, which is what conventional wisdom will tell you.

Running for a number of kilometres downstream of Albury is a walking track, along which artwork reminiscent of how indigenous people used the landscape. The large fish basket is an example of this. All along the river people seemed to be breathing a collective sigh of relief, and at the same time were keen to get out on and near the water again. In Albury, 5 boys swam loudly in what really is still a pretty cold river. Around the corner music from a river-side swimming carnival echoed through the trees long before I could locate where it was actually coming from. From Hume to Albury was full of fishermen, one determinedly, if not that successfully, casting into the wind.

Fish trap sculpture honouring the aboriginal use of the land.

That same wind turned me round a few times when I paused to take photos. The great thing about this boat is that its stability means that I do not have to focus whilst taking the photos of bank condition which is what this trip is all about. It also packs a hell of a lot of gear without too much fuss. It does catch in the wind though, and it takes a long time to get going again.

Behind the wind were rolling dark clouds. With these approaching I was happy to reach the spot I had planned to camp and had time enough to eat a hearty meal and, explore my island. It really was quite remarkable watching the water drain out of the wetlands and back into the river. The strength of the flow made it clear how much water is stored there in flood times. They must have a moderating effect, protecting communities downstream from flood peaks as well as providing habitat and summer pasture.

Tomorrow I hope to make it to Howlong. Hopefully the rain will ease and the sun come out like it did at times today. Howlong will it take me... I don't know. I guess I'll get there when I get there. Sorry - couldn't resist that dad joke :)