Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 24 Narrung Station to Yungera Station Nov 8.

Narrung - Yungera Station

As I leave Narrung, I have music from the film 'The way' playing on my phone. I point my rudder to direct the boat into the stream and initially just drift, consciously taking in the morning quiet, the swirling currents and the dappled, clouded sky. I count my blessings that I have the opportunity to travel down this great river, to see the changes it undergoes and to see the natural cycles in action around me. With a few strokes I direct my kayak midstream. The morning breeze moves around me and I move with it. The sun breaking through the clouds shines like a second light on the water. The music is fitting because a journey down the Murray, however you do it, is like a pilgrimage. There are many times that you are alone and yet you keep meeting people, you keep passing places of significance whether they be peoples homes, different types of bush, changes in the landscape, towns, or where one river flows into another. Like a pilgrimage, a trip down the Murray is a journey through time; you can't help but wonder what has gone before. You come to reflect on your own life and on the people dear to you. It is a cleansing experience and spiritual: a true pilgrimage.

YouTube: Just down from 1258 River Red Gum / Black Box (but with a very fissured bark so perhaps it is something else) Saltbush plains, Lignum, Acacia stenophylla, and then into lowland River Red Gum.. on the New South Wales side it's all River Red Gum. It has been a lovely stop in Narrung, way nicer than I expected. Great to meet Justin and Bianca, and experience their hospitality and go-get-em energy…

Flooded River Red Gum and Black Box woodland with an understory of saltbush and lignum.

Salt bush, Acacia stenophylla, river red gum on bank top, high ground NSW.

Flow across broad meander VIC side through saltbush, black box and river red gum woodland with healthy understory... Meander channel dynamics vary with river level, not only in flow, but also in the path they take. In this example, once the river is high enough a 100m wide flow across the meander happens here. At lower levels a smaller, more convoluted path is taken. Only the lower level flow is confined to a well defined channel. The high level flow path is vegetated and more direct. Both flow through a billabong at their lower end.

YouTube: Overbank flow near the peak of the 2016 floods on the Murray River.

Video showing flow across meander through black box, river red gum woodland with saltbush understory during the 2016 Murray River Flood. Between Narrung and Boundary Bend.

YouTube: About 1248 on a Southerly straight towards Narrung with the big 400 ahead.. On my right there are quite a few billabongs when you look at the map.. And I’ve seen the river using these as shortcuts to get across this area here (shows map).

Approaching the junction with the Murrumbidgee River, it's interesting to see how different their paths are. The Murray in this section has bends which run for between 2 and 4 km. The Murrumbidgee on the other hand, has bends half or third that distance. Compared to the Murray it looks like a windy little stream. The difference reflects the flows down those rivers over many thousands of years. In this section, the Murray follows the bed of its ancient stream, laid down well before the last ice age, before the Cadel tilt blocked the course of the Murray at Mathoura, forcing it first North, then South through Echuca. Since that all began around 75,000 years ago, this must be at least that old. Interestingly, the dimensions are similar to the now dry bed of the river you can still find at Mathoura. Its called Green Gully. You can get an information leaflet at the tourist info centre and go for a drive along it. Back then we had a much wetter climate, our mountains were higher and flows were much greater. The Murrumbidgee, on the other hand must have always had much lower flows then the Murray - either that or it has cut itself a new path which reflects the flows in more recent times. The bigger than meander the greater the flow that river carried when it was formed. The smaller and tighter the meander, the smaller the flow when it was formed. In sections of the Murray like downstream of Echuca, the river is trapped within the ancient bed and meanders back and forth within the original bends. If you look at satellite imagery from Google earth you can see it with your own eyes.

Strong flow through the forest, aerating the river water in the process... large woody debris stranded against river red gum tree trunks...

Boat set up - GPSmap 62s with topographic maps loaded on a micro DS card - was used to determine location, river path and as a trip meter to measure the 250 metre distance between each photo points. A series of photos was taken, from left bank to right bank every 250 metres. In addition, every 1.25 km a video log with commentary was used to keep a record of features and trends observed. Murrumbidgee Junction visible near the top of the map.

Murrumbidgee Junction with the Murray River upstream of Boundary Bend. 1243 km

YouTube: Around 1238 downstream of the Murrumbidgee Junction… Bird call.

YouTube: Large swirls and whirlpools upstream from Boundary Bend. Between 1334 and 1332 approaching Boundary Bend ...large sandhill with Callitris on top... but also a lot of Exotics…. wohooo! that's a whirlpool…. including Palms, pepper trees but even fan palms... vegetation on the bank site looks more mallee like than what I'm used to... red gums on the bank are in poor health with little regeneration ...most of the understory being wattles or introduced species ...up on top of the bank the Murray Valley Highway runs by and we will return to that in a couple of Km.. 4 km… lowland River Red Gum forest on the New South Wales side with much better health ratings - Between 2 and 5.

Boundary Bend

Houseboat and dingy downstream from Boundary Bend.

Stately old river red gum.

After the ‘bidgee’ it is not far to Boundary Bend and since I had already been in the boat for over three hours, I decided that it was time for a stretch and perhaps a bit of a feed at the local servo. The boat ramp and picnic area was under water, so the only spot to pull up was right next to the Murray Valley Highway. I waited for a gap in the traffic to dress a bit more respectably, stowed my gear and headed in to try my luck. It turns out that the service station is a mecca for trucks and farm workers, as well as a tourist destination. The meals are generous, tasty and good value. While I was enjoying the luxury of a meal cooked by someone else - with chips - I overheard a family discussing river levels behind me. They knew all the flood dates. Turns out they were interested in my project. We had a good yarn. I stopped a lot longer than I expected. People they knew kept coming in door and joining in the conversation. Everyone knows something about the river, and they all know how people’s livelihoods and wellbeing are affected by the way it is managed. One of the people who joined the table was the owner of Yungara Station. What luck, the high ground on which it stood was where I wanted to stay for the night. On asking permission, John let me stay in his river weekender, which is where I am writing this post from. Sofa, electric light, running water and fly screens - what more could you ask for? After such a good feed and heartened by the company and their interest in my research project (comparing the state of the river banks to how they were in the 1800’s) the next 26km seems like a breeze.

YouTube: Just on this stretch there are some incredibly old gums which have lost (at time) nearly all of their limbs and regenerated… the number of hollows in them is just incredible…

In addition, the afternoon the light was is beautiful. The breeze from earlier in the day had eased and the cloudy sky broke to allow occasional patches of sunlight and glimpses of blue. It was an afternoon with some special bird observations. I saw a young wedge tailed eagle sitting on the low branch of a black box tree, not far from the water. It had something it had caught in it's claws, but was being swooped again and again by a willy wagtail. I saw a flock of murray rosellas fly over the river. I have only ever seen these green and yellow relatives of crimson rosellas in small groups of three or four, here there were 20. In the still air, the reflections were awesome. I hope that they come out well in the photos.

Strong flow across meander here (see foam trails)... at boundary between black box and river red gum... Google Earth 8/10/16 shows broad shallow vegetated channel...

YouTube: Coming up to 1202 km and the point of Buchanan’s Bend and my last entry for the day as i will be camping there.. I wanted to say in the summary reports on the condition of Black Box and River Red Gum on the Murray… it says that i thought it said that Black Box communities were severely threatened and at risk of dying.. I have seen some (particularly older) Black Box trees look stressed. Most of these are recovering… some with limited bud growth, showing how stressed they were… just a few shoots, about one or two years old, but most trees are between 3 and 4 in health, which is quite good… admittedly I can only see about 100 m through the forest… anything beyond that I cannot really judge… but what I can say is what I have seen… and from what I have seen, I can say that the Black Box is not dying, it is quite a resilient species, suited to where it grows along the river up until at least this point, which is Yungera Station downstream from Boundary Bend and on the way to Robinvale.

Yungara station goes back to the 1850’s. A lot of work needs to be done to restore it, but it already looks good. Recently the families of those that lived at the station got together for its 150 year anniversary, reliving the memories that they had and those that had been passed down to them. Keeping history alive enriches whole communities. Our lives become stories interwoven with others. Across the river a tree slowly cracks and falls in the forest, making a big splash in the water as it does so. Otherwise the river is quiet, it does its thing and moves on. On the shore butcher birds are the last to sing the evening in with their melodious call. The sky develops at first a light pink haze and then turns purple. Cicadas and crickets begin to buzz and swallows do their last round of scooping up mosses before retiring to their nest and leaving the rest of the job up to the bats. I know why people enjoy holidaying on the river.

YouTube: Productive zone on the river's edge. Yungera Station. Behind the submerged trees the water is teeming with young fish and dragonflies.. every time you see a ripple that is a young fish, or tadpole come to the surface… If you stand still for more than a few seconds, you can actually see them come up.

 

YouTube: I can also see shrimp and tadpoles… tadpoles come straight to the top, they have the big fat bodies… they come straight to the top and then return to the bottom again and the shrimp hang around the floating debris… the fish are more mobile.. they tend not to go up and down so much… but I can see a lot of shrimp and a lot of tadpole in this particular spot… perhaps it’s this spot with its intersection of saltbush and meadow grass and the habitat that provides for these small forms of water life…

Yungera Station

Tomorrow I make for Tol Tol, then the day after that Robinvale, where the manager of the caravan park assures me I can canoe literally right up to the office!

A bed for the night and electricity to charge my devices...