27/1/17 Up the river

    Today the southerlies have abated , and the temperature is warming up again , time to flex the muscles and go for a paddle in the Goulburn River . We didn’t have to go far - we are only 100m from the boat ramp .

  We launched and headed up river first - there was some current to paddle against - The river is reasonably wide here , but does narrow here & there , concentrating the current and making our paddle harder . 

  The river is lined with river red gums for most of the way that we paddled  . The water is a bit murky - you can still see the bottom when it’s only 600mm deep . We’ve been told there are redfin , macquarie perch , bass , trout and too many carp - hence the murky water . Carp are like the vacuum cleaners of the river - they suck up everything and are always stirring the mud & silt up , they also contribute to the amount of trees in the river , by sucking all the earth from around the tree roots , loosening the trees roots and finally causing them to fall over !!

  As we went up the river we came to the first narrow section , and with that the increase in the speed of the water , time to paddle harder . Our forward speed slowed and nearly stopped , but we kept going , finally we started going forward again , getting across into an eddy which helped us get out of the current .

  The water temperature was quite cool , not really warm enough to go for a swim , must be to do with the temperature at Lake Eildon - that’s where the Goulburn River starts .

  There are no shortage of sulphur crested cockatoo’s here , or corella’s , and they all screech and make a racquet . One of the cockatoo’s was down having a drink beside the river . 

  More fast water and more effort required to go further up the river - while we could still go forward we would keep going . Rounding another corner , we found another section of fast flowing water - we tried to go through it , but the effort required to maintain position was more than we could sustain - time to bail out - turning the kayak into the current we turned around quite rapidly , picking up speed and cruising back down the river . It was an easy paddle / rest / paddle / rest all the way back .

  We investigated a couple of inlets to see where they would take us - nowhere was the answer !! Before long , the boat ramp appeared , but we kept going downstream for another kilometre or so . The rail bridge appeared and we stopped there for a few minutes in the shade - it was about 32 degrees now and quite hot in the sun .

  Heading back to the boat ramp , it was time to escape the heat for a while - we were surprised to find it was 1pm when we got back to the van . Time for lunch before we packaged up some things  and sent them away . 

 That’s been our day , and here are the photo’s .

 

Cheers !!