Day 1: Barwon River 0-19km

Monday 2 August 2021; 14km paddling

I had a bad night’s sleep panicking about high river levels and inexperienced paddlers, but woke to another beautiful day in Bourke. We had arranged to drop Ted’s car and boat off at the Bourke Riverside Hotel for a week while he and I made our way back down the river from Brewarrina. Conveniently, the hotel was across the road from Digger’s Retreat, the morning coffee and breakfast location in what was the old RSL, so we could fuel up before the 100km drive to Brewarrina. The drive was through typical flat mulga countryside, with only the flocks of emus crossing the road to add excitement.

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At Brewarrina we drove down to the weir, where the Barwon River water level was even higher than when Ted was there 3 days prior. There was little sign of the fish ladder, and the ancient fish traps were well and truly covered. I was reluctant to launch the canoe, with the water quite fast flowing with small pressure and wind waves. So we drove the van a little further downstream to what was a quieter stretch of river. When the River Kings left Brewarrina in 2017 the river flow was 300ML/day, so we were unsure what a flow rate of over 10,000ML/day would be like to paddle. We were fairly sure we wouldn’t need to portage too often, but we had the canoe cart on board anyway.

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Packing the canoe took some re-arranging and different strategies given we had everything, including a collapsible kitchen sink, but eventually we got everything in nice and tidy and all mostly below the gunnels. Ted drove the car back to the Brewarrina Motel and picked up Trevor who had offered to look after my car for a week until we got back to pick it up. After Ted and Trevor returned we waved goodbye to Trevor (I had just given my car and everything in it to a total stranger in a town I had never been to before!).

We set up the Go-Pro to capture those first few paddle strokes of rank beginners, or almost as likely, us tipping out. With some very inept paddling we managed to paddle upstream, me in bow and Ted in the rear, and turn and paddle past the Go-Pro. Well, actually we missed that and had to go around again and have a second go. Just after passing the camera I turned around and saw something floating in the water behind us.
“What is that?” I asked Ted.
“Ah, that’s my personal floatation device that has fallen overboard.” he replied. “At least we know it floats, even with our emergency beacon attached.” he further offered. The PFD stayed disconnected from Ted for the rest of the trip.

Back to shore to grab the camera and our first attempt at landing the canoe and then we were off down the Barwon proper. By this time it was past lunch but we paddled on, Ted resorting to warm Bundy and cola to keep the hunger at bay, and to celebrate finally being on the river after all the anticipation, and challenges presented by, and lockdowns associated with, Covid-19.

After 15km we rounded a bend that had a campsite, with 5 very large stumps set up as seats, that was too good to go past. The fire pit was well under water but there was plenty of dry wood and flat areas for the tents.

Ted had a go at tempting fish with our very good Jarlsberg cheese along with setting up a yabbie pot with the same. All it did was waste our good cheese. No fish, so dinner for us was steaks grilled over the fire, along with fried diced potato, capsicum and onion followed by red wine. Unfortunately the red wine kept flowing nicely and our 2 litre cask was empty before we finally made it to our sleeping bags.

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