After breakfast we launched down the river. The railway bridge at Tocumwal has a central span that could be raised to allow paddle steamers through although the more recent road bridge prevents them proceeding up river. There was another example of this sort of bridge at Cobram. At Tintaldra and Jingellic only the distinctive pylons remain of their rail bridges.
Most of the day we spent catching and then being overtaken by Pam and Geoff as they and then we took rest breaks. The Barmah National Park that we were paddling through is beautiful and we marvelled had how low the banks were. It would have only taken a minor rise in river height for water to be flooding through the forest.
We also saw lots of birdlife including lots of Nankeen (Rufous) Night Herons in the trees along the river. Tony and I last saw these at Tumbling Waters near Berry Springs N.T feeding on scraps of chicken being fed to Johnson River crocodiles. Other birds we have seen on this trip, Kookaburras, Cormorants, Pelicans, and Kingfishers (both Azure and Sacred varieties).
View from the lunchspot
The lunchspot was on a bend in the river and when we got out we could see some water on 50 metres away. At first I thought it was a billabong however it was the river turning back onitself. We had to paadle 2 kms to reach that point on 50 metres from the lunchspot.
View from Sandy Beach campsite
Tony had some difficulty getting back into his kayak after lunch. Note the dirty shorts!!
In the afternoon the wind sprang up as we paddled toward the campsite we had agreed with Pam and Geoff. We paddled past some good spots and were disappointed to find there was nowhere to pull up at Lugmans. Pam and Geoff were already there and decided to continue downstream to find another site. There wasn't anything obvious on the map so we decided to backtrack 500 metres to a sandy beach we had come past. It was exposed to the wind but it was a nice spot and on the map it was shown as "Sandy Beach".
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