Monday 9 August 2021: 32km paddling from Bourke
After 1.5 days in Bourke we packed the car so Ted could drive the gear to the top of the levee bank while I wheeled the canoe to the river bank where we had taken the canoe out two days earlier. On the way I had a chat to Dean’s electrician. He felt it would be a great morning to go wild pig hunting with his dogs and a knife. Apparently the dogs love it, although their life expectancy isn’t very long, even with the chest armour they wear. It all sounded a bit brutal for me. Then it was drag the canoe back past the barking dogs, but this time I had the energy to talk to the red heelers and they quietened down and stopped jumping compared to Saturday on my arrival. Ted and I rolled the canoe down the bank, then carried all the gear down. Dean and the ‘sparky’ came down to the launching place to see us paddle off. I don’t think they had been down to that part of the river since they were kids. Ted talked to our morning video, got Dean involved in the video, and then we were off on Stage 2: Bourke to Rose Isle Station, a distance of 142km.
The first challenge of the day was the Bourke Weir. Normally this would have required an annoying portage, but we had scouted it the previous day and had decided we could run it pretty much anywhere but opted for the left bank so we could set up the GoPro. Although there were small waves and much faster current, the canoe tracked through nicely without any risk of tipping.
A “Historic Site” marked on the map enticed us to visit “Fort Bourke”, a stockade built by Major Mitchell in 1835 on the Darling River to protect his provisions from the local Aborigines. He attempted to follow the river downstream, first by boat but found it too dry, so then by horseback to where Sturt and Hume had reached the river during their 1828-29 expedition, near current Gundabooka Station. Mitchell seemed to be the only explorer who consistently had trouble with the locals. During his first venture to the Darling in 1831, he was forced to return to Sydney after the loss of two of his men and all the party’s rations after a conflict with Aborigines. On his second expedition an altercation at Menindee resulted in the killing and wounding of several Aborigines. Mitchell was unwilling to continue downstream to determine if the Darling continued to the Murray and returned to Sydney with only 3/4’s of the expedition objective completed. With the job of charting the whole of the Darling River, Mitchell was redeployed for a third expedition to fill in the gap between Menindee and the Murray River confluence. The original plan was to return to Menindee but he changed route, due to the feared lack of water, and headed south to the Murray and downstream to its meeting with the Darling. His desire to follow the Darling upstream waned after about 30kms and he returned back to the Murray. Although he failed again in his intended goal, greater glory was his with the discovery of ‘Australian Felix’, the productive area that is north western Victoria. The remainder of the Darling River was charted by Sturt in 1844 en route to explore a ‘river’ that lead off Laidley Ponds to the north-west that he thought might actually flow to the fabled inland sea. Unfortunately it was nothing but a flooded creek.
Ted relaxing after running the Bourke weir 
Fort Bourke
It was good to be back on the river again, and enjoying the diverse bird life, including a flock of Yellow-billed Spoonbills with a single black-legged and billed Royal Spoonbill. It must have felt a bit like the black sperm amongst all the white sperms in Woody Allen’s “All you want to know about sex, but we’re too afraid to ask”. For only the second time we managed to find a camp on the right hand side (north bank) at about 32km from Bourke on King’s distances.
Noisy flocks of Little Corellas 
Yellow-billed Spoonbills and one Royal Spoonbill
White-bellied Sea Eagle 
Whistling Kite
Red-tailed Black Cockatoo 
Nankeen Night Heron
