Hay to Balranald

 

Hay to Balranald

Day 1.

Arriving in Hay at 11am after driving from Wagga Wagga. After my trip earlier in the year, Hay looked familiar, but I was only there to get on the river again. Not wanting to leave my packed kayak for too long, I left it at Sandy Point and parked the car in a visible part of the main street.

Then I bought a coffee and walked quickly back to my boat. I was on the water at 12.30, intent on making Hay Weir to camp.

I struggle, off the couch. Five and a half hours of paddling, in water most backed up from the weir so no current. What I call dead water.

I see a small black snake in the water who scoots away, hits the shore and then impersonates a dead stick. There are birds of prey (BOPs) and pelicans at the weir. Being a Sunday there are quite a few fishing tinnies out but they are mostly respectful when they are passing.

The landing looked obvious, a muddy base to a road running up to the flat land above. I stepped out in the mud, and went to pull the boat to a better position to put the wheels on and pull it up.

As I dragged it backwards I tripped over mud that had solidified wheel tracks in it, and clipped the back off my right heel, which caused many problems on the trip and is still not healed over a week later as I write this. I limped up and checked out the site. A couple were just setting up to fish near where I landed and there was another guy wandering about. At the other end of the weir infrastructure there was a series of concrete blocks to stop cars and then a dirt track led down to a campsite (there was rubbish bin and someone had had a fire at some stage. The contents of the bin were strewn everywhere.) Circumventing the concrete blocks, there were two 4WD’s parked down by the river, one with a trailer. I went back and got the kayak and wheeled it carefully to the block barricade. I didn’t line it up properly so it took some maneuvering to get it through. I set up camp.

The boat that belongs to the 4WDs turns up and promptly crosses the barrier of yellow buoys and spends the next two hours fishing in the water running out of the weir. Some pelicans turn up but are not fishing.

Just on dark the boat comes back and both utes drive off. I settle down to sleep. Kookaburras are the last bird to chorus at night and first in the morning, predawn. So I’m up early and off. My morning ritual is to make coffee while I pack, and pour a fruit juice sachet into a sealable plastic back full of muesli which I eat about 8am.

Day 2

On Water at 7.

The first hour on the water is always the best. The heat has not come, nor is the sun high enough to get in your eyes. There is more chance of seeing birds and animals early. You need to not just drift along enjoying the river, but must still paddle. Forward travel is the mission. This morning  I saw six wallabies, 4 kangaroos, 2 foxes 3 kingfishers and later into the afternoon 3 emus, which were the first I’d seen on the river. And one nankeen night heron.

I feel sorry for the cormorants because they study me, but almost always fly off, and down stream, where I am headed. And then we repeat the process, again and again.

On this part of the river there are lots of long bends, with nothing in the paddocks that I can see. Quite a few fishing shacks, some pumps, and a few large houses.

One boat passed me going up stream and shortly came back. No time to fish. Maybe they were just enjoying the cool of the water on this hot day.

I see some sheep. A strange variety which looks like they’ve got a rug on their back, and sometimes have black heads.

The whorls are back as there is a current but tomorrow I will be on flat water again. I sing songs, try to think of the names of everyone I ever climbed with, and my umwelt project.

The river red gums are all in flower, and the air is fragrant. There are flowers lying everywhere on the water and at times it is like paddling on gold. Their caps, that look like little 2mm yurts, or glamping tents, are strewn everywhere on the sandy and muddy beaches, and they often land point up making it quite painful to walk barefoot. I see more wallabies, and more kangaroos.

Only one substantial house on this day, though a number of shacks, and every 10k or so the obvious 4m height warning for a power line crossing the river. Though again I see one that does not have this and is much lower. Noticeably there are no cockatoos on this stretch, and maybe this is because it is not cropping country? Not many magpies either. And no introduced trees like in the higher parts of the river.

Make camp about 5pm. I’m tired but it is too early and though it is a nice sandy beach I have to climb up the bank into the shade of trees until it cools down enough to be in direct sunlight.

Day 3.

Again on the water at 6.30. More kangaroos drinking, pigs, goats, and another fox. It seems a long day, on the dead water of the weir.

In the afternoon, lulled by thinking I am close to Maude Weir I dig in. But the heat of the day, and some very long bends and the dead water delay me. Aware that passing the weir is impossible I stop to ask an older guy with his face covered in netting if I should get out where he is camped, but no, he’s still about two km from Maude. I see another place to get out and pull up, and start talking to two retired men, Wayne and Noel, about the possibility. They offer to put the kayak on the back of their ute and take me into town. Which we do. They drop me off at the pub and I book a donger out the back. I have a shower, and put my non paddling clothes on and go to the bar for a corona. Wayne, Noel and another guy called Geoff come in, and I have another couple of beers and we sit swapping stories. I’m in bed by 9pm, which is late for a river night.

Day 4.

Getting my boat back to the river (at the other end of the town is an epic. The tape on my wheels breaks and I have to improvise. There is no simple way to get to the river and I end up dragging it through some wasteland behind the road fence, and down a rocky bank.

I’m still on the water by 7.30 am.

Once again I realise that I have been too lackadaisical with the maps I have brought. Admittedly, it’s rather simple, you get in at one end and out at the other. But that doesn’t take into account the anxiety you have that you’re not travelling fast enough. And by lunch time on Day 4 I had no idea where I am. The maps I have don’t show where Redbank Weir is, though later I realise that they do but in such small print I couldn’t read it.  

I’ve commented that that I don’t need GPS, or the like, but do rely heavily on the GPS function in Maps on my android phone. It can see where I am, and what the river looks like, a lot of the time, but between Maude and Redbank it lost track of the river and at times everything goes black.

In 2023 Dave Alley did the fastest descent of the Murray in 14 days, 23 hours and 33 minutes but all the articles said he did it without entertainment, because he dropped his phone in at the start of the trip, onto which he had downloaded hours of podcasts. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-26/man-kayaks-down-river-murray-record-time/103138338

At the time I scoffed, because I felt there was always enough happening on the river to not need such puerile distraction, but there are sections on this last leg where I would have killed for any diversion, other than negotiating snags. Particularly on the way towards Redbank Weir.

They say your life flashes before your ideas when you’re dying, well I found it passed through my mind, slowly, whilst paddling. I scoured my memories right back to primary school. I thought about all the overseas trips I had done, and then the internal Australian trips. I thought about all the big performances I had been involved with, and then the smaller ones, both with Anna, and solo.

I saw my first cow on the trip, and a sea eagle being chased by a whistling kite. And then I saw some Pacific Black Ducks with 4 bubbies and the male did the ‘oh, I’ve got a damaged wing’ thing and they all left the bubs, whilst there was a whistling kite above. 'I'm not the threat ducks.'

I also saw some cockatoos in one section for the first time.

I play a game where I set time parameters. I can’t stop for camp until 7pm, or even start looking until 7pm. And then I’ll see a perfect camp and consider it. Sometimes I bail, but more than not I keep going. Today I stop, change my mind, and then paddle another 4ks to find a camp.

I almost run onto another black snake as I pull up on a beach to camp. It sees me and dives under the water, which I’ve never seen a snake do. I sit in the boat trying to determine where it has gone before I put my feet over the side. I see it pop up a few metres away and it sees I’m still there and bobs down again, when it comes up again it is 8 metres away, safe enough for me to get out.

Day 5

I continue towards Redbank Weir. I can tell I’m on the weir, because the water is dead and it takes more of an effort to progress. The blossom is in large carpets but not moving. I’m confused because I seem to have passed the furthest north point of the river which is where I assumed the weir was. And in the afternoonI have passed where the Lachlan joins which I assumed was near the high point. Other writers have commented that it is not that spectacular, so much so that I realized I had passed it the previous day without noticing.

One long bend has numerous fishing shacks along it, ranging from old iron shacks that look in a state of disrepair to quite sophisticated builds, some are amended containers, many incorporated an old 70s caravan into the build. One is proudly labelled Stoney’s Camp. There is about 40 of them on both sides of the bend. Some have the facility to lower a boat, or at least to get to the water. I wonder about the ownership of the land, and thinks they would make an interesting photographic essay, if you could find the owners and they were interested in talking.

Late in the day I see campsites and Parks signs and then run into a guy in a foot-pedal canoe fishing, and ask him where the weir is, and he denies all knowledge of a weir, even though the river is clearly not running. I go another km and see his camp at Wool-press Camp and toy with the idea of camping near there, but he has the prime spot, right where it looks like I could pull my boat out, and its only 5ish, so I push on. Around 7, I see a spot by a low bank that I think I could climb. I put my oar down and it seems not too deep, but when I step out, I am suddenly floating. I realise I had touched a log, but use these to get out and climb onto the bank. Then I use a piece of cord to pull the boat up. I know I can get the boat into the water the next morning, but not convinced I will be able to join it. In the end, by standing on sub-merged logs, it is an easy relaunch.

The campsite has meat ants though and two seem to just nibble on my legs, not bite. But my skin reacts to this by stinging. I know from experience that if you kill them, surrounding ants get agitated and come at you so I just flick them away, and decamp as soon as possible. Later on that day a fly stings my shoulder so it is a day for stings.

By a closer scrutiny of the maps I have I can see that Redbank weir is further around the top bend of the river that I realized, and that the left bank is all Yanga National park

Day 6

I continue towards the weir. It holds back water a long way. At one point, I see a sheep that has escaped shearing for a long time on the National Park side. Very woolly.

Getting closer to the weir, and just above, there are gates where water can be let out to flow away.

I arrive at the weir around noon, and am able to land just above the buoys. But then I go for a walk to check out how to continue. There have been additions to infrastructure here since other writers described their journeys, and Water NSW have built a large 2m high black fence that bars access to the river down stream. It runs all the way up to what looks like private property. As I’m standing there a ute pulls up on the far side of the fenced off area. And then drive through to where I am. Daniel from Water NSW hops out. I ask him if he will open the gate and he agrees. I then go to get my boat up on the wheels, but again the improvised tape breaks. I then ask if I could throw it on the back of the ute and take me to an entry point and he agrees. He is very amenable. I jump up on the ute to hold the kayak and we drive off about a kilometre to a good landing. He gives me some fresh water, and even offers me his sandwich lunch which I decline. We chat for a while and then I’m back on the river kicking myself about how fortuitous that meeting was.

Just down from the weir there are some introduced trees and palms and what looks like an old home site. Above a large red dirt bank and I wonder if that if where the weir got its name.

I paddle until 1pm and stop to have lunch then push on trying to get as far towards Balranald as I can before camping. I eventually find a muddy spot and stop for the day. 

Kangaroos come down opposite to drink. At one stage on the river I had seen an emu come down, but the last part of the bank was steep and he was trying to work it out, and what the hell I was. I tried to suggest he go downstream but was ignored.

I check the BOM and it says there is a storm coming at 5am. I have no wish to repeat my experience at Carrathool. I realise that is for Hay and change to Balranald and it says storm at 2am continuing to 5pm. I moved my tent off the bank up to the top among smaller trees. Behind there is water and a wetland with marshes.

From the higher vantage point I can see trees reflected in the water on dusk, looking like monsters lying down.

 

Day 7

It rains about 2am briefly, but when I get up it’s dry. It is a wet pack up though, and the campsite muddy now. I get on the water, a bit anxious about what’s ahead. By 10am there has only been some light showers, but then the front goes through and the trees start lashing about and leaves and sticks start falling. Fortunately, it only lasts about 10 mins, but then the rain sets in, reasonable heavy. I am soaked and on the edge of cold, but there is nothing to do but push on. The only other option is find a camp, set up my tent and go to bed until it stops, and I feel that will waste too much time. I push on. It is one of the more unpleasant things I have done in a while. The river is a little monotonous. No sign of much in the way of humans. And tall trees on both sides. Every second bend has snags almost across the river and I have to thread my way through. In the end when I complete this leg of the river, I can claim that I did not have to get out of the kayak to portage around snags at all, while other recorded trip mention doing this. There are places were I can see logs have been cut in the past to allow access but some of the jams I pass would not be passable in a boat currently.The right bank for about 5km have places where water is running down in small torrents. It confuses me but later when I look on google earth I can see channels running parallel to the river that must have been filled by the rain.

About 2pm (fortunately not 5pm as predicted) the rain stops, and it becomes more pleasant. I see the only Doller bird of the trip, which surprises me because they were quite common on the upper sections. All the camp sites are muddy, but eventually I chose one, and set up camp. I go to charge my phone and it will not charge. After I finish the trip, I try four places before a phone wizard in Echuca explains  that water has got in. He managed to dry it and it starts charging again. But the battery is irrecoverably damaged and by Christmas I’m contemplating a new phone. The sun comes out and dries things a bit. I study the maps and decide that I am 20 bends away from Balranald. Bends are hard to quantify, so I multiply by two, as every bend has an inner and outer point.

Day 8.

I have turned my phone off to save charge so I can’t see my GPS position. I start counting off the points. I divide the 40 by 10, and count by 0.1. So 1.1, 3.2 etc. For the last 20, I start narrating the points, and if they are close, offer an imaginary audience a free round of drinks. Point 3.3 is beautiful, with 4 massive gum trees, another has a tree so tall that when it falls, it will block the river with a thick trunk. I make a wager with myself, that if I get to the caravan park by 2pm I will have a gin and tonic, but if later, I will punish myself with a Great Northern beer. I arrive at 12.15pm.

At point 3.8 the river splits. Some ducks take off and fly left. I pull out the map and see there is a channel comes in from the left. So I go right, and only one point later the bridge is in front of me and I enter the town. I paddle a little further to the caravan park, go and check in and carry all my stuff to the appointed site. Then strap the boat on the wheels, and with a little help from a fellow camper to get up a levee, and able to wheel it to my site.

It is windy and my tent won’t stay up. I walk up to the main street. I try an air-hose at the garage to blow out my phones charging point but that does not work. It’s Sunday, and everything is shut, including the two small supermarkets. I go to the RSL and order a gin and tonic. And realise their chinese restaurant is open and order veg spring rolls and salt and pepper tofu, pleased they have vegan options. After my river diet it is too much food, and I can’t finish it all. I turn on my phone and book a bus leaving for Hay at 5.40am Monday morning. I spent the afternoon reading a novel I found in the kitchen and staying out of the sun. It’s close to summer solstice and Balranald is far west in NSW and a long day. All the cockatoos that I hadn’t seen on the river are at the campsite and they wheel around and shout long into the dusk, only stopping on full dark at about 10.30. I turn my phone back on, and set the alarm for 5.15am, but sleep lightly and wake and get up at 4.30. Making coffee and killing time until I catch the bus. An hour and a half later I’m at the familiar Hay roadhouse and I walk into town to my car, which has not been harmed (a bird nesting in the tree it is under has shit all over the bonnet though). I am back in Balranald in an hour and a half, then return to Hay and head south to Echuca.

This 300km section completes the river journey from Jugiong to the Murray River, but leaves sections from the source to Jugiong to complete, which I have deferred for lack of water, difficult logistics and time. 

River Length 1485 km

14th December 2025
Distance travelled
1171 km
Remaining
314 km