Day 228 - Canoeing the Murchison river

Today our aim was to canoe the Murchison River, this river has it's estuary at Kalbarri, in the north of Australia the majority of the rain is in the summer monsoon season, this meant that the river was running quite slowly at this time of year in the lower reaches. This is the river that we were looking out at from the look out yesterday. We met the rest of our party at the canoe + boat hire shop in town. After being fitted out with buoyancy aids we hopped on board the 4wd bus, Joanna was worried that we may get stuck or capsize again, however worry not, we had no problems!

Unfortunately being another water based activity we don't have many photos. We we arrived at the beach and unloaded the canoes, with this completed we were given some basic guidance and were told to head upstream for 25 minutes and then turn around back to the beach for a freshly cooked breakfast. Compared to previous canoeing we have done, we were using a kayak paddle, this mostly involves getting your knees wet from a dripping paddle, we picked up the technique easily and were going in a straight line quickly. We had a sedate paddle upstream while a family behind us were doing a far greater distance by zig zaging across the river. After 25 minutes we turned back as the argument, between two twins, another sibling and their mother was gaining traction as they zig-zaged across the river. On disembarking for breakfast we offered to take one of them in our canoe for the next leg.

Breakfast was good, with bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, tea and toast.

We started the next leg with our new crew member and succeeding in proceeding a straight line down the river and contributing to their family harmony. We stopped at a muddy swimming hole however being relatively cool still nobody was keen for swimming. We then had a final leg to paddle before reaching the final pull out point, and catching the 4wd bus back into Kalbarri.

Ready to roll

Unsurprisingly we had tea and cake in the afternoon, I (David) may have indulged in some Belgian waffles while we were at it.

In the evening we put some of our camping stuff up for sale before heading to bed.

Till next time David & Joanna

PS. I'm writing this in the departure lounge at Perth airport on 25th July, expect our next posts on the week of 4th August when we're back in the UK!