Day 9 - Wet undies!

The decision had been made, my trip would end at Echuca on the weekend. Only 250km to go now. All the lonely time on the river was now a heavy weight on my shoulders and my mood had now slipped from excitement on Day 1 to boredom that bordered on depression at times. There was a whole life waiting to begin for me on the Gold Coast with my beautiful partner Joy and there and nowhere else I wanted to be. The only thing I could do was continue to paddle as whilst paddling I could always feel the end getting closer. During the previous evening I had my first real scare as a big roo came bounding down to the river very shortly after turning off my headlight to get some sleep. It was certainly packing a bit of weight as it thudded across the sand bar. Certainly I was comfortable that there was nothing that would deliberately cause me harm on the river but if a roo like that stumbled into my tent it could be very serious. Day 9 was very hot and the wind made life very challenging anywhere with a sizable fetch to the north west. Regardless of the conditions, I was now on a mission with a defined timeline and I intended to do the hard yards early in case conditions deteriorated further. Overall I covered another 54km and was now within 200km of Echuca. My highlight for the day was taking an unexpected swim. It was late in the day and was starring into the falling sun with a rippled water surface. The glare managed to induce a loss in concentration, mostly due to the fatigue of a long exhausting day, and I simply did not see a huge log in the river parallel to the flow that had about 2m of log showing about 5-10cm above the water level. I rode straight up it and swung perpendicular to the flow. I thought I could salvage the situation like Day 1 but I just could not hold it. I spent the next 15mins in the middle of the river sitting on the snag bailing out my kayak with a 400mm tin can. Considering my water bottle, maps, and thongs were all by my side I am very lucky nothing was lost. Even though initially unwelcome, I guess the trip would not have been complete without one capsize. It was a hot day and cooling off was quite pleasant.

Yet more river around every bend with more snags to negotiate...

Pulling stumps on Day 9 and starting to look very scruffy

Progress to Day 9