Throughout the River Expedition I’m looking to raise much needed funds and awareness for Camp Quality! Camp Quality is the children’s family cancer charity that believes in bringing optimism and happiness to the lives of children and families affected by cancer through fun therapy. Please donate whatever you can to help me reach my goal of $10,000 for Camp Quality over the next year and a half, every little bit counts! 

Thanks for your support! 

With the winds dying down over night I knew this was my opportunity to make up some lost time and get some decent distance completed. I checked my board in the morning to see how the repair job was going, and she didn’t look to flash, this was playing on my mind while I packed up my gear as I set off into Lake Burrinjuck. Now with no current as I had left the river and entered dead flat water it was hard going carrying the 75kg of gear.

The fog was heavy, thick and cold, my camera fogged up every time I went to get a photo, and the visibility was around 20meters. But I knew if I was going to avoid the wind I needed to go now, I took a few paddle stokes from the shore and I was soon in a complete white out, all I had to go by was my compass, map and GPS. I’ve never experienced such heavy fog like this before. I paddled for over 2 hours and 10km without seeing any land, all I came across was a couple floating logs, ducks and a swimming kangaroo and by the looks of my GPS he was around 100meters from the shore in any direction! Not sure how often people come across swimming kangaroos, or how often kangaroos go swimming but it was definitely a first for me.

I paddled for 20km without taking a break, I finally found a small sand bank to have some lunch and take off some layers off clothes and set off again powering through before the wind set in again. The mirror image of the valley from the reflection on the water was stunning, breaking the glass like surface with the nose of your board and paddle is something that I will never get sick off.  It was around 1 o’clock and I came around the corner to this 4km straight section in the river and like I expedited I could see this wall of wind howling through the valley coming straight for me. It hit hard and easily took a couple of kilometres per hour off my average time, making this already huge day seem even longer. Although I pushed through and it was all worth it, I came across some incredible sections of the lake, completely untouched by humans the trees covered the hills and valley all the way to the water’s edge. It was starting to get late and the sun was about to drop over the back off the hills, the wind started to die just as I entered the dam opening and I was able to head  straight across to the state waters reserve.

Once I got to the reserve I checked out my board again to see how my repair held up. It was looking pretty bad, starting to leak water into the board and that’s only going to destroy the board and make it unsafe to continue. I had to make the tough call to have a lay day and not paddle today, but I need to get the board fixed up properly if I’m going to continue the trip. Should only take a day or two but will be back on the river shortly!  

The big day! The start of my 35 day journey down the Murrumbidgee River! An early start to the day with a final weigh in of all the gear: Food 29kg, Gear: 40kg and Camera equipment: 6kg. I was aiming to carry around 50KG in total, as that is what I based my tests and training on. So it was a pretty big shock when I was 20kg over what I wanted to carry, even though I had weighed everything individually and was on target for 50kg, the extra weight was mainly from having all my water containers full and a bit more of safety equipment then first planned. Easy to fix through, a quick test in the dam would let me know if the extra weight was going to be a problem. So I loaded the board up with the gear weight (75kg) and my weight (70kg), and it had no problems floating, the next test to see if I could actually paddle it. As the Naish 12’6 Glide is recommended to carry 113kg this was going to really test its capacity with 145kg now on board. After a couple quick laps I was happy, once it got a little bit of momentum it held its glide and handled well.

Now that the final prep was out of the way and I was comfortable with everything we headed down to the river. Around 15min out of Canberra I started on the river, this was the safest place to start and as far upstream as I could get before the white water/rapids got to gnarly to paddle with gear on board. A quick goodbye to the parents and girlfriend and I was away, taking the first couple paddle strokes of thousands to come.

Full of excitement and adrenalin as I’ve been waiting for this moment for almost a year, although it was soon to wear off and reality set in as I faced a 15km stretch of river with headwinds at around 30kmph it was slow moving and hard work. This 15km stretch took me around 5 hours to paddle, I finally found a small bend on the river that gave me a bit of shelter from the wind, I was able to finally get a bit of pace up then the unexpected happened. The thing you always have to plan for but never think is going to happen.  I ran into a submerged object that had stopped me in my tracks, and almost threw me straight over the front of my board. I heard the crunch and rip of carbon from underneath me of whatever it was going straight through my board, I managed to get the board off it and looked down to see a rusty old metal pole with a bright yellow paint and bits of carbon fibre now covering the top off it, as soon as I saw this I knew it wasn’t good.

I was 15km downstream from the closest road and house, and another 40km from Burrinjuck Dam. There was only one thing I could do, get out the repair kit and try my best to get this board back on the water. A couple hours later and a dodgy repair job complete and I was able to keep paddling. I was only able to get another couple kilometres in before the sun went down, so I found a nice bank and set up camp for the night. A bit disappointed with how the first day panned out, but I ate dinner over a beautiful sunset and hoped for a change of direction for tomorrow. 

Food preparation in its final stages! So excited to see it all coming together after months of planning and testing! 

Sponsors for the Expedition.

The Sponsors for the Murrumbidgee Expedition have now been locked in, Go check them out! So many great companies have gotten behind me on this trip and without them it wouldn’t be possible, so thank you to every single one of them!