Riding an Anabranch

Rather than simply following the course of the Murray River, I decided that it would be far more exciting for Tim, David and Marcel to enjoy a bit of variety by cutting of some kilometres and shooting down Anabranches...

And what is an anabranch? Well, I'm glad you asked. An anabranch is when a stream or creek branches off from the original river and rejoins it later downstream. The anabranch I had selected was Mullaroo Creek. This had been recomended to me by some people I had met on the Darling and I would have to say that they were right. It was a great route to take. Of course it did provide us with a few challenges....

as you can see from the picture above, there were many snags which we had to negotiate and the river - unlike the Darling which was also snag ridden, this water was flowing! Tim and I were in tghe double kayak and as I was in the front it was up to me to call out which direction we should go and for Tim to guide us in that direction.

"Left", I'd call out with some degree of authority. "Left", I'd say again as we began to get closer to a branch sticking out prominently directly in front of us.

"Left left left", I'd call in some distress as the kayak kept in a straight line.

"OK then", I'd say as the kayak began to veer to the right. "Right". Then of course the kayak would begin to move to the left. "No no. Left. Go left. No. Go right. Riiighhttttt. Argh!". Bang! The kayak must have hit snags every five minutes or so. It was great. I'd recommend it to anybody.


There was one snag which spanned the river. There was a low section on it and I directed Tim to charge at it - full tilt. The nose of the kayak slid up the snag and the kayak came to rest half way across and Tim had to hop out of his seat, lean against me and put his feet onto the snag and push with all his might before we came adrift. Great fun. We also had a bit of trouble negotiating a very low lying bridge. We had to get down to the same levels as the deck of the kayaks almost and drift slowly under.

There was also quite a few birds and we even came across some fishermen that took pity on us (well, mainly me really) and handed us a six pack of beer, which was very nice of them.

Of course the creek didn't run swiftly for long. Mullaroo actually bypasses a lock and drops around three metres over ten or fifteen kilometres or so and is geat fun whilst it lasts. Once the creek reaches the same height as the water pooled up in the lock below however, it becomes as placid as the Murray River and we camped that night on the banks of a placid Mullaroo creek. You would never know what fun could be had on the upper reaches of this wonderful little creek.