Wednesday 22 September 2021; 38km paddling and a lucky escape
Day 2 on the Tumut River presented the biggest challenges that the two old Teds had faced.
My first ‘old person’ moment was after a couple of kilometres of paddling when I couldn’t remember where I’d put my phone. I was sure I’d not left it behind, but we pulled over while Ted rang my number. Somewhere in the bowels of the packed bags I thought I heard it briefly ring. During our lunch break I decided to find it, and pulled every bag apart, without any luck. I knew it had to be there somewhere, as not only had I heard it ring, but earlier a message had come through on the GPS that was linked to it telling me that Melbourne had been hit by an earthquake. That night I found I had packed it with my tent.
Meanwhile Ted had his moment when he couldn’t find his sunglasses. Unfortunately for him they didn’t turn up as he had left them at our campsite (he later went back to get them, but the whole site was underwater.).
All this was nothing compared to our next ‘moment’. As we rounded a bend we saw that a large tree had fallen on the left hand side, blocking most of the river. Immediately downstream of this, on the right hand side, were a grove of fallen and flooded Willow trees, with trunks projecting well into the main river flow. We pulled up alongside the shore on the right hand side to survey our options. The right hand bank was quite high and steep, with lots of Casuarina trees. The Casuarinas and Willows made lining the canoe downstream impossible, and the steep bank meant we would have had to paddle a fair distance back upstream to find a place to start a portage. Instead we decided that if we went close to the fallen tree and back-paddled in front of the Willows, we could reverse-ferry to the eddy behind the fallen tree.
We paddled back upstream to find the right line, and back-paddled past the end of the tree. However, whether because we weren’t strong enough (Ted’s view) or because we had the bow pointing toward where we wanted to go instead of the stern (my view), we ended up on the right hand bank directly in front of the Willows. We were hanging on to the Casuarina branches, deciding what to do next. Lining the canoe or a portage were even more out of the question from here.
It seemed the only thing we could do was to see if we could push off from the trees and paddle fast enough to get past the Willows. Of course we couldn’t, and the canoe crashed headlong into one of the horizontal trunks, taking out the Sony camera mount, and ending up broadside to the river flow.
Fortunately the canoe didn’t go under the Willows, and by sitting on the downstream gunnel I was able to keep the canoe tilted downstream and prevent any water entering. Going forward was not an option. Instead we used the branches to pull the canoe backwards toward the right hand bank, and eventually reverse it into a gap in the branches, facing back upstream. From here we were able to paddle upstream against the flow, and by keeping the bow slightly toward the right, i.e. toward the left hand river bank, forward-ferry into the eddy behind the fallen tree.
We were extremely lucky that we didn’t get swept under the Willows, have the canoe swamped, or lose any gear. In hindsight, Ted felt that we didn’t have the strength for a reverse ferry and that a better option would have been for us to have paddled forward faster giving us enough steerage to get past the Willows. I disagree, and feel that the reverse ferry should have worked, just we didn’t execute it properly. We both agreed that a forward ferry from the start would have worked. But that would have felt very strange to be going into the danger zone backwards.
Fortunately this was the only time we found the river narrow and extremely challenging because of fallen trees.
Our misadventure with the Willows was downstream of Nimbo Fork Lodge, a high-end fishing lodge, at the junction with Nimbo Creek. This is a strange junction in that the Tumut River actually flows into Nimbo Creek at this point, and not vice versa. Nimbo Creek re-joins the Tumut River much further downstream near Brungle Road bridge.
From the Tumut River, a bridge crossing Nimbo Creek a few hundred metres away was visible. Without maps we couldn’t understand the bridge’s purpose. It appeared to just provide road access to the island between the creek and the river, possibly for stock purposes.
Relieved to enjoy lunch after our morning adventures
Eighteen kilometres from our morning start we stopped for lunch, and consider our lucky escape from the Willows. After lunch we continued downstream, passing the re-entry of Nimbo Creek and under the Brungle Road bridge a kilometre later. Just downstream of the bridge the Tumut River again split, with the left hand branch looking like it had the most flow.
At one point the river widened considerably, becoming quite shallow. After the mornings experience we were keen to avoid both banks with their overhanging Willow trees. However, the river shallowed suddenly, and the canoe momentarily bottomed out on a gravel bank, but we managed to push off the gravel using our paddles.
Further downstream, as the river went through some outcropping rocks, a train of moderate waves provided us with a different paddling experience.
In addition to the usual cows, twice we saw wombats. The first was a young one, sitting at the top of the bank at the entrance to his burrow, just contemplating the world. Until we sent it scuttling underground as we paddled past. The second sighting was of a pair of wombats, a mother and child, who also bolted into their burrow at the sound of us going past.
We were glad, and fairly tired, when we finally pulled up at the junction of the Tumut River with the Murrumbidgee River for our second night camping. We had completed our paddle of the Tumut River, and had the mighty Murrumbidgee River to Gundagai the next day.
