Rafting on the Tully River

  Tully, Australia
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

We've nearly made it as far as Cairns but decided to stop about 150km south at Mission Beach, and boy is it hot and humid. It only drops to about 26 degrees at night and with nearly 90% humidity isn't exactly camper van weather. We slept with the van door open (which with the insects they have over here is an act of desperation) and Andy spent the night with cans of coke in his armpits! The next day we upgraded to an air-conditioned cabin, bliss! First time we've had air-con since Sydney over a month ago.

Tully River

But we didn't come to Mission Beach just for the humidity, we came to use my Red Balloon voucher that I got for my leaving/sabbatical present from Adviva. We booked a white water rafting day on the Tully River, which is Australia's most famous one-day white water rafting experience. It was 5 hours of rafting over grade 4 rapids, 45 in total, with names like "Alarm Clock", "Wet & Moisty", "The Maze" and "Sharks Tooth" - great fun!

Tully is the wettest place in Oz and had 7.9m a few years back, so is obviously ideal for this sort of thing. The trip up to the gorge was through enormous banana and sugar cane plantations, my elephant from Thailand would have had a field day! Tully also holds the record for the largest private railway in the southern hemisphere. The town has clubbed together and linked up the sugar cane fields and the sugar mill with a railway.

Anyway, enough of the facts, down to the business of rafting! We were in a raft with two other Brits, two New Yorkers and a Parisian, and our guide Drew. After successfully negotiating a few of the bigger rapids, we went for a swim/drift down the river, the Parisian (Sabine) didn't want to go for some reason so it felt only right that she was the first to fall overboard negotiating the next rapid. We seemed to do quite well in our raft and didn't lose too many people and I stayed in all day. We nearly flipped the raft at one point but were saved when all the people on one side fell in, Andy included, but we dragged them back in just in time to go over the next set of rapids.

All in all a good day was had. A few bruises to our name but otherwise unscathed. Thanks to all the guys and gals at Adviva (aka Specific Media) for the present!