The Final Hurrah

Well I've been a bit slack over the last few weeks. Instead of regularly updating my blog to let people know where I am and what has been happening I have instead been lying low. A lot however, has passed under the bridge since last I wrote.

I'm in Hobart now and not on the river for a start.

Yes thats right, I am literally thousands of kilometres away from my beloved rivers. Have I completed my odyssey? Well, yes and no.

My last port of call on the Murray was Wellington, which is where the Murray River pours into Lake Alexandrina. At least, it has poured into the lake in the past but in truth today it is in a sad state of events today. Not much more than one thousand megalitres a day flow over at Lock 1 at Blanchetown and the majority of this is destined to be pumped out of the river and piped to Adelaide before it reaches the lake. The lake itself, which is seperated from the ocean by barages, is typically 0.75 of a metre above sea level. Today, due to the ongoing drought it is minus 0.3. That means the level of the lake is 30 centimetres below sea level! The locals are, as you can imagine, up in arms. They are worried that their entire livelyhoods will go up in smoke simply because there is no water for them to live on.


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Even people who have water allocated to them and are allowed to pump water from the lake are in trouble. Why? Because the lake is so empty that they simply cannot get pipes to the water.

None of this is the reason why I'm in Hobart without having paddled to Goolwa, which is at the far end Lake Alexandrina and is where the lake waters interact with the ocean - not including the barrages that are in the way at the moment and preventing any mixing of the two waters. As I left Renmark a few weeks ago I had the flu and had to take a couple of days off from paddling at Berri. Up until reaching Renmark I have been remarkably healthy and I assume that on hitting a major town I was open and suseptable to catching any dreaded lurgies which happened to be lurking about.

After hanging around for a couple of days at Berri in a caravan park, I decided to head off. My cold was largely gone and time was a-wasting. I had a big day on the second day out and made Cobdogla with a few hours to spare before night fell. My shoulder however, began to feel a touch sore. Instead of giving it time to recouporate I haded out the next day - and the next and the next. After heading out each morning I would find that after about ten minutes or so my should would become increasingly sore. If I tried to look in one direction or exerted to much pressure then sharp pains would shoot through my neck and shoulder.

By the time I was in Wellington each stroke was a studied effort in pain. With a big day needed to cross the lake I was worried. Worse, the lake is renowned for being challenging and I was concerned that my body wasn't in any fit state to battle adverse conditions which may spring up at any time.

Now I'm in Hobart once more and giving my shoulder time to heal. It has taken a good couple of weeks for the pain to dissapear completely and I now shall be looking to testing out the shoulder by carrying out some explorative paddles around Hobart before making a decision on whether or not I should paddle the final leg I had planned - across Lake Alexandrina to Goola.

I shall keep the blog up to date to let you know how I go.


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