Pay Attention

I almost came a cropper today. I guess I've become blase about these rapids on the Darling. they can't add up to much can they? In fact it comes as a bit of a surprise finding any rapids on the river at all. I certainly wasn't expecting any when I was planning this journey.

Rapids on the Darlign?

Bah.

I went through several areas with rapids today however. Some required a deft dipping of the paddle to line up properly, but most were simply pointing the kayak in the right direction and paddle like buggary - for any rapid upon the Darling invariably means scraping across some rocks as you sail on by.

I'd just gone on by a homestead and was actually thinking how nice iit would be to take a photo of the next rapid I went down when this rapid came into view. I whipped out my camera and had it ready to go. The only problem was that I hadn't really been paying attention to what was going on up ahead.

This rapid was a weir.

I put the camera down and took a couple of hurried strokes, hoping a bit of speed would see me right, but no joy. I hit the weir and a log stuck on it held me fast. I had to hop out of the kayak to get things going again and after a couple of concerted heaves the stern (can you call the rear end of a kayak / canoe a 'stern' or is that a bit presumptuous?) started moving inexorably and before I knew it lay athwart the weir, Water spilled into the kayak briefly as I battled to keep it upright. Luckily I won.

After that it took me only a minute or two of heaving the kayak about and it was all ok.

so the lesson here is to never take things for granted. Expect the unxpected and stay alert: even if you are o Australia's longest river where paddle steamers used to ply their trade. I was just lucky the drop to the other side of the weir was 6 inches instead of 6 feet! It could have been a lot worse.