Day 37, Tailem Bend – Goolwa, 18 Nov

Tony

Session One: Tailem Bend – Wellington

I start late today after yesterday’s long day of two paddles and the Lions event and I spend the morning remembering everything we’ve seen and achieved over the last five weeks and more. Our start at Hume Weir, the first sausage sizzle at Albury, the outback areas and even the trio of Lions events last week seem like light years passed but at the same time just like yesterday.

I have a warm wind with me, around 5km/h, it’s hot to paddle in but gives me a helpful push. Wellington is a nice little place, I love the old pub and the court house that’s now a café. It’s really quiet here – when I get into the next big city it’s going to feel so loud and hard in comparison.

Session Two: Wellington - Goolwa

Lake Alexandrina, just before the last length of river, is too dangerous to paddle without a support boat. It’s so big and open that the waves would be too treacherous and it doesn’t have much depth, especially now. So we drive across to Clayton Bay near the southwest of the lake so that I can paddle the final part of the Murray. We pass a point of the lake, getting a sense of its vastness, and then the land is varied: small salt flats, empty scrub, cornfields, vineyards and wetlands. The land is flat and you can see for miles which is a novelty for me as so often for the past month my view has been restricted by the banks.

When we get to the boat ramp I meet a father taking his son out on a kayak to fish. He confirms my route from this point, passing Goose Island and aiming for dark trees on the horizon on Hindmarsh Island. Lake Alexandrina is really an inland sea and there are several islands over here near Goolwa.

For 5km the conditions are ok and I paddle well. But as I start to turn the big goose-neck meander rounding Hindmarsh that brings you in to Goolwa, the wind hits me hard. I dig in and go for it. I can see houses and think I must be close to the bridge linking Goolwa to the island but it’s actually further away. I must have some unforgiven sins as the wind is really punishing me - I’m working hard for every metre. I’m glad it wasn’t like this from Clayton Bay! 

“You might as well stop because I won’t give up!” I shout to the elements. But it just batters me harder.

Pan calls and says he’s waiting on the other side of the bridge, the roads around the town and leading to the riverside being too tight to take the caravan down. I’m near the apex of the turn and I’m struggling to make ground but I’m on the island side of the river and should be better off once I cross to the other mainland bank. It’s really painstaking getting across and takes all my energy. Not long after I got over, there’s a sign by a boat ramp saying ‘Welcome to Goolwa’ and that’s my queue! Relieved, tired and euphoric, I pull in, lift myself out and shake the blood circulation back into my legs.

Even though it was great to have our final Lions event and a bunch of great people at Murray ridge yesterday, I’m really pleased to see a familiar face when I land at this, the absolute end of the paddle, and that’s Pan, who I’d like to thank again for volunteering to help on this adventure and going the distance – I wouldn’t have been able to do this without him.

How do I feel? Strange. Thank god I’ve finished! I think of the distance we’ve travelled and everywhere we’ve been. It’s a long way. It’s been a long journey.

Goolwa, 13:45, Monday 18 November, 2013.
Phew!

Pan

After setting up at Goolwa Caravan Park – thanks to Andrew there for donating a site to us - we drive to the beach, put the cruiser into 4WD and slide our way along the length of the bay to the mouth of the River Murray. It feels like all the trials and tribulations have been well worth it when we reach the river’s mouth, which is fairly narrow, and we celebrate in style, happy to see the sea and proud to have reached the end of this epic journey, even if it was impossible for Tony to paddle all of Lake Alexandrina.

On the way back down the beach we say hello to a couple of guys catching pippies – Tony has shuffled about in the sea at Coffs Harbour for pippies in the past, just picking up by hand what he could feel under his feet, but has never used one of these rake & net tools. One fella had loads in his net and I had a go but didn’t have the patience for it. Tony managed to catch some, but it was pretty laborious, especially using those guys’ heavy old tool, not one of the newer aluminium ones like they were using!

As soon as we get back to our park, Tony can’t wait and gets straight into cooking the pippies, boiling them first and then frying them in butter & chilli. We both devour them, I love seafood, and it doesn’t get much fresher than this!

Later, Tony buys us a celebratory dinner at the Corio Hotel, a nice old place serving up real good food. Frank Tuckwell, Lion, Rotarian and Councilor of Goolwa, and bookkeeper of the river register arrives with his records to induct Tony into the ‘Hall of Fame’, as we like to call it! He has lots of stories to tell. He began the register in 1954, two years before a big flood, when he was down at the river fishing and a chap from Texas, Queensland paddled up to him and said ‘Hey, where do I sign in?!’ There was no such record kept at the time, but Frank took the guy’s details down there and then, and so the register was born!

Not many people know about the register so a lot of people arrive and stay the night or leave the area straight away and don’t get their achievement acknowledged, which is a shame. Tony is the eighth person on record to have paddled the river this year, and entry number 256 in the current book. As Frank regales us with a heap of funny tales about other people’s river journeys I, and probably the bar staff too, start to think we might never leave the hotel, but it’s been another long day and we have to get back to the park to settle in for our first lay-in for a while!