Finally some water...

Having not had any water around all farken year, we decided a little while ago that we should go to Tassie to try and find some. First of all the ferry. The crossing wasn't too messy - 4 to 6m swell, so we got a little bit of sleep, unlike those who could be audibly heard vomitting. We went to the buffet and piled as much food as possible on and shared it. As you can see the resemblance is uncanny....



first up we hit up the Lea. It was a little on the low side, but given that mikey and roger wouldnt know a creek if it bit them on the arse, it suited our objectives - fun simple drops, not too much in the way of consequences - it was fun and even snowed on us early on...



We ran the Lea twice before heading off to Launceston for some grub.

After Launceston, hearing that there had been some rain in Southern Tassie, we loaded up the ute and drove down there. After almost running out of petrol, we set up camp in one of the various random campsites we stayed at. These invariably turned out to be a lot closer to the road than we had thought, were next to cows etc.
The next day (sunday) having picked up the key for the Styx river from some tassie boaters, we hit up the Styx. It was at a fairly decent level - a little scratchy in the easy bits where the river widened out, but in the whole good fun. Mikey boatscouted & then ran his first class IV rapid, 'Volvo Falls' backwards apparently...

Only having one vehicle, the best way we figured to do the shuttle was to enlist local help. More than one deliverence-esq moment passed before we were pointed in the direction of a local who could help us out - he was a dude - even going so far as to make sure the ute was at the takeout!

From the Styx we headed to the Broad. I ran this a couple of years back and after a sketchy moment with an undercut rock, feeling generally freaked out, had a bad day, portaging a lot more than was necessary. This kind of jaded my memory - its a ripper of a run. After dicking around for a while (having turned off on to the wrong road) in a forrestry coup where we almost got bogged a number of times, we eventually worked out where to park the ute. This is where the real fun started, and 1.5hrs later, having negotiated cliffs and impenetrable scrub, we arrived smack bang at the top of the first rapid exactly where we wanted to be.

This rapid was good fun (see the following two pics)....

this was good fun. The next few drops were also good clean fun, then we arrived at the crux...
I don't know what this rapid is called, but it ends at a rock aptly called the 'deathstar' which has a habit of trapping paddlers and their boats....

we scouted the entire lot before dan made a run down without any issues. Mikey followed and had issues straight away as the pic with the pink boat illustrates. These culminated with being pinned on a tree. A swim here would at least hurt...directly below the tree was a manky undercut trenchy thing that didnt look particularly appetising...


There were no other issues with this rapid.... We then went back to hobart.

The next day we had a rest day (including a race in the Browns Rivulette race with the Derwent Canoe Club). The following day we went out for a paddle around the Totem pole and out to some islands - that was good fun! all the same, sea kayaking is hard work.