Swan Hill to Mildura - Day 1 - 5th November 2017

Simon and I left Melbourne yesterday afternoon and drove to Lake Boga where we camped at the back of the lake. The campsite was great with good clean amenities. We went to the pub for dinner, had a couple of beers. We both had Pasta Carbonara for dinner (mistake - we will eat a lot of pasta over the next 2 weeks) and then headed back to our tents for an early night. When I got up to pee in the middle of the night the full moon was lighting the campsite very brightly.

This morning we exited the tents and packed up around 6.30 am and then did the short drive to Swan Hill. First stop was the supermarket to get supplies, then breakfast in a bakery cafe before driving down to the river.

We unloaded the kayaks at the canoe launching steps. Last year when we arrived in Swan Hill the river was much higher and we had the kayaks at level 7.Today we were loading the kayaks at level 1.

It took a while to pack the gear in the kayaks. I was pleased with myself that I got in it all in. It Takes a bit of juggling to get it all to fit. Once the kayaks were loaded I drove the car around to the V-Line car park. Hopefully it will still be there next week.

We launched the kayaks and paddled beneath the bridge. We made good progress as the river is flowing nicely. Judging distance has been difficult because many of the blue distance markers are missing. We stopped for lunch after 2 and half hours. Actually we stopped for a snack but it ended up being lunch. Soup and a hard boiled egg.

After lunch we paddled around Beveridge Island forgoing a shortcut via an anabranch. We made another stop and ate another hard boiled egg because the Scotch Finger biscuits were too difficult to extract from the kayak.

We paddled on until after 4.00 pm and stopped after 46 km. As the banks are high and steep we debated going on further but I thought there was no guarantee it would be any better further on. We had found a lovely site above a bend in the river. We chatted to a couple of young guys who were riding scramble bikes. One was an agonomist working in Swan Hill whose family has a property at Boundary Bend where we will be in a couple of days.

Dinner was sardines and pasta.

Wildlife sightings today: lots of ducks, pelicans, a few grey herons, egrets, a couple of spoonbills, some rufous night herons, lots of cockatoos and some small kites? Also 2 snakes, 1 in the grass where  we had lunch. It took off when Simon stood up, its movement caught my attention otherwise we would not have seen it. The other snake was swimming across the river straight towards my kayak. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture because I was mesmerised watching it and then I was paddling to get out of its way.