Going With The Flow - Part 3 - Expedition - The River.

We packed our gear, making sure to keep everything safely stashed into dry bags this time. We decided to wait until we got through the 100 m of the rock gardens below us before inflating the rafts again. Putting on wet clothes was just a normal thing now. We rinsed the previous day's pebbles out of our socks and then wrung them out before putting them on.

At the end of the rock gardens we dumped our packs and I loaded a small daypack with emergency supplies. We exited the river and entered a small creek that ran out of the crater of the volcano. Initial plans included an ascent to the summit, but we decided it would be best to dedicate another outing specifically for this.

The water in the creek was very cloudy. A white cloudy colour. I don't know why. It might have something to do with the fires? We could see some large areas which had been burnt out in the big fire. A lot of trees were damaged or dead and even the undergrowth was still recovering some years later. We walked up the stream for 45 minutes or so, until the growth became too thick to move through. While here, away from the noise of the river, we could hear birds. The main one a lyrebird.

Back at the river we inflated our rafts and ate some morning tea. There were some little spats of drizzle but nothing too concerning. Willa and I made our way down the river. This mode of travel was so much quicker and less physically taxing than the hike upstream. We floated, paddled and got out to drag sections. The small rapids were fun and at times a little exciting. In some places we both got out and worked together to guide the boats through tricky sections one at a time.

Willa commented that she was beginning to look up a lot more now. Previously a lot of her focus had been on where she was putting her feet. This was true, I had noticed it too. I became more aware of how damaged some areas had been by the fires. Much of it had thinned and the tree's foliage was sparse, with little growth on the trunks. I began to see small Azure Kingfishers as well as the ever consistent Cormorant.

Floating slowly down the stream we watched as clouds swirled in the mountaintops above us. These were not just thin wispy clouds, but dark heavy looking things. They were spinning and twisting like smoke from a campfire might do. We could hear the clap of thunder in the distance, but at this time our weather in the valley was calm and still. This changed quickly.

In an instant we were beset by an onslaught of gale force winds and rain. The thunder now seemed to be right on us. In the hills around us we could hear the creak, crack and crash of trees coming down.

Willa was maybe a hundred metres ahead of me. Branches as thick as your arm were coming down around us. Between us, on the slope to our left, a tree with a trunk at least 50cm in diameter was being bent almost in half! There was a large cracking sound. Willa had turned to look at me. This tree was going to come down on the river.

"Just keep on paddling!" I yelled.

Another tree higher up the slope came down. It's head landed next to the other one. I paddled hard and caught up with Willa. Just after I reached her the tree came down into the water.

"We need to keep moving and find a more sheltered section!" The storm was loud, with only a couple of metres between us I still need to yell to communicate. Willa looked back at me she was calm. There was no countenance of fear in her face. She nodded. This felt reassuring.

I had now gotten in front of Willa. My more heavily loaded raft was travelling quicker in the current. I found a small cliff on the edge of the river and paddled over to it. Looking back, Willa was about 70m away and had gotten hung up on a shallow rock in a small rapid. The storm was raging. Willa wiggled and pushed with her paddle, freeing herself. She joined me in the small bit of shelter we had found. We had to cling to cracks in the rock face to stay in position.

Our body temperature was starting to drop now that we weren't moving. We chatted about the excitement of the storm. It continued around us but we were relatively sheltered from the wind and debris. We pushed for M*** Scrub, a camp on the *** *** *** Walk, as soon as the storm backed off.

It was not far from where we had sheltered, maybe 20 mins. The paddling brought some warmth back to our bodies. However one of the things that happens with rafting is that your upper half is warm, but when you start to walk all the cold blood from your legs gets shunted to the rest of your body. Cooling your core rapidly. We pulled into the crossing and carried our gear through the rain into the wooded campsite. We hastily erected our tarp and created a dry space. As I talked about in Part 1, M*** Scrub always appeared to be a dark dingy place that I would try to get through quickly, but today it was welcome shelter from the weather around us.

Taking advantage of our dry space, we both got into thermals and warm tops. Willa got some noodles on the boil. Donning my raincoat, I went out to gather fire wood. It is hard to find good firewood in a wet environment. Even more so in a regularly visited site. I walked up the path a bit and found some fallen hardwood branches. I piled these onto the fire place and repositioned the large logs that had been used in a previous fire. I used the firelighters from my pack and got the fire started and went to find more fuel from near the river.

When I returned I sat with Willa. She made some comments about the conversation she had with the lady. I looked at Willa, "What are you talking about, what lady Willa?" Certain she was mucking around with me, or gone mad :).

"The one behind you."

I turned and there was another hiker setting up camp. She got herself sorted and then joined us at the now raging fire. After being so far from populated areas, it was strange to see other people. They told us that they had come in with friends but the others chose to stay in their car at the locked gate during the night and avoid the weather. She was very grateful for the fire. We all chatted for a while and found numerous connections. I went to bed and Willa stayed up chatting. I have no doubt Willa would have loved the conversation after being stuck with me for the past 5 days.

In the morning Willa and I moved all our gear out to the river edge to try and dry it out a little. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still obscured by low cloud. We had been informed that we were going to get sunshine with high temps. Both of us were looking forward to it. We took it slow, spreading our stuff out over the rocks and stringing up a clothes line for the tarp. Our camp mate's friends arrived and we talked to them as they set off on the trail. Willa and I loaded our rafts and set off in the sunshine.

The river was different again. The water was wide and flanked by large tracts of flat land along one bank. The water started to change here. This land was previously cleared and used to farm livestock. NSWNPS (National Parks) has now acquired it and is slowly re-vegetating. The water, while still clear, was no longer crystal clear. We both began to see large fish rush past our boats. We floated carefree along, letting our rafts move with the current. Occasionally we would need to pick a line for a rapid or get out to cross a shallow section. It all felt very calm compared to the previous day. We were becoming comfortable on the water.

Coming up to a narrow section, I was looking ahead to a fallen tree and its root ball in the river. I was trying to decide whether it was passible or we would need to walk it. Suddenly I realised I was about to crash into another tree that was across the water. I was too slow. I hit the tree and fell out, but my raft had started to go under the tree, jamming. Willa crashed into me. Fortunately we were only in shallow, waist deep water. Her raft flipped and she went down under it. Her raft was moving to the tree as well. I grabbed it and threw it to the bank and then grabbed her pack as it started to float away. Willa had surfaced and was chasing her paddle as it floated away.

My raft was wedged under the tree. I managed to pullout the dry bag with my camera gear as it began to become crushed with the pressure. My pack was stuck. Looking down the river I could see Willa had reached the deep pool at the end of the narrow section and had eyes on her paddle. I managed to get to the valve on my raft and dumped the air. This allowed me to pull my raft and pack under the tree. Willa returned with her paddle.

The two of us gathered all our gear together again and got ourselves sorted. Willa realised her helmet was missing. We walked up and down the narrow section with no luck. Once we had everything reorganised we took off down the stream, scanning for the missing helmet. No luck. Our goal was to reach our resupply cache and then make camp for the night. We were making really good time and covering more distance than expected. The sun was shining in a blue sky, but the wind was coming up again.

Our cache was close, in fact we could see the hill where it was located. We had now entered a section of the river that was lined on either side by large dead river oaks. I suspect they were killed by the fires. These trees were struggling with the wind and had started to drop large branches into the water. At one point we took refuge at a shallow island to wait for a particularly strong burst of wind to pass. It eased and we paddled on. We pulled up to the granite outcrop and small waterfall that marked the creek where we had stashed the cache on the way in. After tying off the rafts we climbed up the bank and collected our treasure. It was still quite early so rather than make camp here we decided to take the cache and push on to the crossing near the old dairy up further.

The river had a few good curves and we rarely had to walk any of this section. The wind however was still strong and despite the blue skies, again found ourselves hearing the sound of falling timber in the slopes above. We had just come through a section of swift water when a tree fell across the river and our previous path. Not more than 2 minutes after. We were thankful that we were nearing our planned destination.

The crossing was not as expected. Previous visits here I recalled as having having clear banks. This time even the trail was thick with grass and tobacco bush. I can't tell you how grateful I was that we weren't trying to hike the *** *** *** Walk. We pushed on looking for any patch we could to erect the tarp. Rounding a bend we found a tiny, sandy beach with small river-beaten oaks.

Both of us pulled in and got out of our boats. This site felt like heaven. The steep slope of the opposite bank was sheltering us from the wind. We able to get above the water level substantially and still create a level sleeping space in the river sand. There was a heap of timber to get a fire going. We set up camp and then proceeded to open our cache.

The cache felt like Christmas Day. Willa could not remember what we had packed in there and every item that came out was a surprise. After dinner we washed up and went to bed. Yet again, the bank opposite our camp was lit up with glow worms. It was a very restful night. In the morning we enjoyed our tinned food for breakfast and watched the golden colours of the river as it reflected the sunrise. Donning our clothes dried by the breee, we took for another day of paddling.

It was a calm and uneventful day on the water. The river flowed much like the previous day. The river was moving through a narrow, steep sloped valley again. The old road was occasionally visible, carve into the side of the hills. We were aiming for the last crossing at the end of the *** *** *** Walk trail. This was the last point before we would begin moving past private land.

The banks at our planned camp were incredibly overgrown. When I set the FKT (Fastest Known Time) on the trail here, it was possible to drive a vehicle all the way to the river. Walking around the bank here, Willa and I were barely able to find a track. The opposite bank was bad too, with thick shoulder height grass. There was no where to camp. We pushed on. But not much further. Rounding a bend, we found a sandy bank atop some rock ledges.

This time we needed a shelter to protect us from the sun. Because of the rocky ground we had mostly used rocks instead of pegs the entire trip. Here they weren't enough. It would seem at this point, when in flood, the river pushed all the rocks further along leaving only sand. The wind kept blowing our shelter down so we ended up leaving it down. The night was clear and we lay there watching the stars, planes and satellites. It was our last night before really reaching civilisation.