Our Christmas campsite was again in a pasture, this one eight feet or so above the river at k-post 2126. We had to move some dried up cow pies to clear a place for our tent. The evening was clear and warm. We set the beach chairs up overlooking the river.

I carefully planned each step of dinner. We had to peel then boil the potatos, cook the gravy and mix the stuffing all with just the camp stove. We had cold turkey from a deli that I hoped the gravy would warm up.

Everything worked perfectly. We drank out of these great green and orange plastic goblets we got at the $2 store and ate from blue and green plastic plates. The presentation equaled the food. The setting sun made the eucalyptus trees across the river glow gold.

We stuffed ourselves. We even had leftovers. I played some more carols before we went to sleep.

Those first two days on the river were the best. After that we encountered the bad side of the Murray River: Water Ski Boats. Lots and lots of water ski boats.

The Murray is not a wide river and it continually undercuts Eucalyptus trees on the bank which fall into the river causing snags at literally every bend. Most snags are obvious but submerged snags abound. We hit several. It concerned us that a snag might eventually capsize us. Imagine water skiing over a snag. It could kill you. In fact snags have killed many skiers we heard later.

Nonetheless, lots and lots of people ski the Murray. The worst part is not the wake from the boats or the fact that we have to constantly make sure we stay close to one bank or the other. The worst part is the noise. We could scarcely carry on a conversation. I was moved to write an essay about this. See Australia Chapter 7.

The Murray river has a lot of road access. In the section around Corowa, you can drive to just about any bend in the river. Of the 18 million people in Australia, I think over half spend their Christmas holiday on the banks of the Murray.

Typically the family drives their car or 4wd to a particular sandbar and sets up a camp. Then someone tows the boat to the nearest boat ramp, launches it, and drives it down the river back to the camp and beaches it at the sandbar

As a result, tents covered almost every sandbar where a ski boats could beach and a car could drive up to. Just like in America, the car campers brought everything conceivable. I called it the Aussie Internal Combustion Festival. In addition to the ski boats and jet skis, they had mini bikes, land cruisers, quad runners, and gas powered generators. I even saw a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

After two glorious days of near solitude, it was hard to take the crowds even though they were just families out having a good time.

Around every turn, people stared at us. Their reactions ranged from interest: "How far are you going?" to bafflement: "Why don't you put a motor on that thing?" The former I liked, the latter made me want to whack them on the head with my paddle. But the most tiresome call from shore, so tiresome that I actually started paddling for the far bank anytime we approached a lot of campers, was "You're a bit late aren't you?!"

(Joan: At first we thought they were saying we were a bit "light," a joking reference to the fact that we really were heavily loaded. But that was just the Aussie accent. Eventually, we understood that they were saying "late.")

By Late, they were referring to the Murray Marathon, a 400km canoe race the left Yarrawonga two days ahead of us. We wanted nothing to do with a fully supported race where the contestants paddle 100km a day for 4 days. We had absolutely nothing to do with it. Yet most people could not understand that. At times it seemed that around every bend someone yelled, "You're a bit late!" We usually responded, "We're aiming for last place." Eventually we didn't repond at all. After a hundred iterations of this call, it made us feel like people didn't think we were supposed to be there.

(Joan: ah, they were just having fun with us).

My horn usually sat in full view of everyone on top of the cooler in front of me. My favorite call from shore was, "Play us a tune on your x" where x was everything from bugle to tuba but never once French horn. Nonetheless I almost always played something when requested unless it was before 10am. Invariably my playing brought cheers from the campers. I found it much better for my ego than busking in Melbourne.

Somehow though, every night we managed to find fairly private campsites. Often we skinny dipped in the mornings with a  little soap and shampoo. We stayed remarkable clean. One time I dropped the soap. We never found it.

At night the temperature always cooled to great sleeping weather. It could be 95 degrees during the day but at night we were really glad to have our sleeping bags. Most mornings the sun still baked us out of the tent, sometimes by 7am.

The sun did us a favor. We discovered that the ski boats didn't start until about 10am. Later on a cooler day. If we departed by 8 a.m. we got two, wonderful peaceful cool morning hours before the deluge of shattering violent ski boat engines.

One of the worst days started just like this. In fact, we had it pretty easy until after noon. Sometime in the morning we came to a T in the river. A "T" is exactly what is was. Half the river turned 90 degrees left, the other half 90 degrees right. We didn't know which way to go. I assumed it was an island but after our experience on the Mississippi (on the Mississippi River in 1996, we tried to take a shortcut around what we thought was an 'island' at night, and nearly paid for it with our lives. See "Mark's Folly" on this page for our Mississippi adventures), I was nervous. One could be an irrigation channel. We floated down the center hoping the stronger current would be obvious. It wasn't. The leaves in the river drifting into an overhanging tree in the center of the "island" simply disappeared in the branches. I saw little evidence of current going either way.

We selected the right side. It remained about half as wide as the river had been. We saw few other boats though and no more kilometer-posts. I remained confident that the Murray was not really an antipodal Mississippi and did not have dead ends. An irrigation channel, I presumed, would be clearly man made. This definitely looked like a natural channel.

After an hour though, I did start to get slightly nervous. The channel split again. Again we stayed right. It narrowed so much I feared we would encounter a tree blocking the whole thing.

At last we saw a k-post. And to our amazement, it was 10km farther downstream than we thought possible! We were indeed on a side channel but we had taken a dramatic short cut.

We stopped about then for lunch. Lunch every day was sandwiches: sliced meat with cheese, mustard and mayo. The meat and cheese varied.

After lunch it was like being on a different river. In fact, we weren't on a river anymore but on lake Mulwala. We had reached the water backed up by a dam 20 miles downstream.

Three things made that the worst and hardest day: ski boats, wind, and the world's ugliest lake.

The top of the lake was a confusing maze of channels with ski boats zipping back and forth. The chop was awful. Probably luck alone kept us following the correct channels.

The dam at Yarrawonga created lake Mulwala in the 30's. For some reason they didn't bother to cut down any of the eucalyptus trees that would be flooded. Now the former forest is in an erie flooded maze of dead trees. The awfulest lake you can imagine. Eerie even in midday sun.

The only navitable path through the lake is the old path of the river. So all the boats, and us, crammed into the old channel.

Finally the number of ski boats got so bad, we decided to take a short cut through the flooded forest of dead trees. At first it seemed quite clever. However, we went around an island and hit an enormous wind. It seemed to get stronger and stronger and we were headed into a wide part of the lake. The wind kicked up waves just as bad as the ski boats. Frenquently we hit the tops of branches and broken off trees that were just under the water.

We had to paddle very hard for about 30 minutes. Fortunately we headed straight at the wind and took the waves directly into the bow. When we finally reached shore, we were quite ready to get off the water. We paddled close to shore looking for a place to camp. Huge amounts of driftwood floating next to shore made it hard to land but we found an acceptable spot in a sheep pasture next too a parptially eaten round bale of hay.

At the end of the day we were exhausted and frazled. Not the way we like to end a day on the river.

next: Eric talks about the ski boats

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