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What the River Taught Me: (mis)adventures and lessons in pack-rafting preparedness

Words by Harrison Croft

Art by Olivia Tait

 

The brilliant sun was only shyly making its way up past the horizon as I arrived at our launching spot: a simple little jetty astride Birrarung where it passes through Warburton. My travelling companion was a keen adventurer named James, and the task we had set ourselves was to paddle from this quaint riverside town to the mouth of the river at Hobsons Bay. Our loyal steeds were two inflatable rafts, and we began aerating these with great vivacity the moment we arrived at the jetty. While I relied upon two trains and a bus to deposit me there, James had been up all morning cycling to Warburton instead. With his bike being swapped for a boat as the primary mode of transport, he carefully secured this cumbersome land-based vehicle to the bow of his raft, and together we cast off. It was a crisp, dewy Saturday which had promised to warm, and dozens of joggers passed us by and asked where we were headed, totally disbelieving my chirpy reply, “back to Williamstown!”

 

The first hours passed dreamily by. While the river transported me downstream, so too did it send me back in time, to an innocent and euphoric era in my childhood populated by Swallows and Amazons and The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow. Mysterious trees thrusted shade across the entire width of the river, birds sang their accompaniment, and a smile was chiseled upon my face. But this bliss did not last long. 

 

A little after midday, James was forced to abandon his bicycle under a tree. To deter thieves, he deflated both tyres and took the saddle and bike lights with him. This felt to me like Mawson eating his own sledge dogs in Antarctica; a short-term gain that forewarned severer long-term challenges. But the bike was too cumbersome: it forced the bow into the water, snagged on rocks and branches, and limited his view enormously. It had to go.

 

Geotagged photos are a wonderful thing. They show me the exact moment when my naïve calm was shifted to a feeling of immense peril. Looking back through my photographs, I ascertain this happened some time around 2:30pm, just downstream of Millgrove, because up until then, I kept my phone in my pocket, ready to snap a sun-soaked photograph in an instant. But after navigating a particularly violent set of rapids, I moved it into a waterproof bag, wrapped up inside a larger dry bag, itself contained within a third bag, and totally out of harm’s way.

 

Rivers are occasionally blocked by felled trees. Birrarung’s upper reaches are blocked by many, many trees. We became like the bear hunters in that children’s book. Each log demanded a response: to go over, under, or around? Going around is known as portaging. You put your shoes on, climb out of the water, drag the leaden raft overland past the obstruction, then return to the water on the other side. This was impossibly slow (and agonising, on account of mountains of untamed and bloodthirsty prickles) and we almost always preferred to stay waterborne when possible.

 

I tentatively approached one of these logs, hoping to disembark and clamber over like we had already done a dozen times before. But the water was moving too quickly – my raft was pressed against the log, and water began to fill the space occupied by my legs. The decision was instant. My boat was being forced under the ancient tree. I mustered every ounce of strength and yeeted my monumental backpack over my head and onto the log, as my raft was sent under the tree with me still in it. With the bag momentarily safe, I extricated my sopping body from the raft, then grappled with this new problem: the rapid water was forcing the boat down and under the log, but the air in the raft was forcing it up and out. At first I favoured this latter force, and tried pulling the raft back out to where it had started. No luck. It became clear that the entire raft had to be pushed under the log. I climbed up onto the raft and began to jump vigorously, pressing it under the water, defying its buoyancy. Each lunge sent it a little further under, and then, with one final shove, it was gone. The raft raced under the water, under the log, and shot out to safety on the downstream side. And because the raft was the only thing keeping me from entering the water and it was now gone, I fell into that icy, rapid stream. My arms caught the log and I dangled there, fatigued to no end, struggling against the current to exit the water. I adjusted my grip, kicked endlessly with my feet, but could not find the bottom. Ought I to follow the raft under the water and under the log? There was no way of knowing what was under that turbid water, I would have needed to submit to the will of the current, and I was sure that that was not the answer. Mercifully my feet found the riverbed, and with a final heave I made my way to the bank. I was too tired to stand. But my raft, paddle, water bottle and shoes were all strewn about the downstream side, and needed somehow to be located. 

 

I never did find my left boot. I spent the rest of the weekend walking barefoot, accumulating cuts and blisters, until a kind old lady drove us back into town and another kind old lady sold me a pair of neon pink Sauconys at an op shop for $3. With moaning stomachs, sodden clothes, ill-fitting shoes, and a concern for the bike abandoned so early in the trek, a bus mercifully arrived and our deliverance from the turbid and turbulent river came. I have always respected water. And the faster that water is moving, the more respect it demands. But I cruelly found optimism’s ceiling on this journey: it is not always enough to approach a task with a happy-go-lucky framing and a self-assuredness. A little planning can go a long way.

 

PS if you find my shoe, do please get in touch!

 

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Harrison Croft

The author Harrison Croft

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