Exploring a River No One Paddles 3 Day Wilderness Packraft Adventure

In this week's episode, me and my mate Sam, a fellow YouTuber, head out into the wild and rugged Australian bush on a three-day packrafting adventure to explore a river that rarely gets paddled. Snaking and carving its way through an ancient sandstone canyon, this 45 kilometer trip will take us through some of the most jaw-dropping landscapes this part of the country has to offer. And with an abundance of wildlife, caves to explore and some incredible campsites, this trip will shape up to be one of the best packrafting trips we've been on. So strap in and get ready, while I take you on a journey and show you a part of the country that very few people get to see. Well g'day guys, so we're out here on another packraft trip this weekend with my buddy Sam. I've just hiked into this river that I've wanted to packraft for the last couple of years, ever since I first came here. We're in an area that doesn't usually receive a whole lot of rainforest. These rivers are usually pretty dry, but we had heaps of rain over the last week and especially yesterday. So the river's come up, so we actually get a chance to actually paddle this. We've got around about 45km to do over the next three days, so we're really keen to get out in the water and explore some really beautiful country. It should be a really nice trip. Just want to give a quick shout out to Ryan from Packraft Australia for sending up some dry suits for us to use. Because we're still in winter, the river's sitting around about 11 degrees, so it's pretty chilly. So if we were to fall in the drink, we'd get pretty cold pretty quickly. So they're really stoked that you could send up some dry suits. So if you guys do want to get your hands on any packrafting gear, definitely check out Packraft Australia. They've got an awesome collection of gear, and Ryan, who runs Packraft Australia, is an absolute legend and is a wealth of knowledge. So definitely check them out. How do I look? Like I'm going to space. Yeah, a teletubby. A smurf or a teletubby. Well, that only took about two hours to get ready. Let's get on the river. And we're off. And we are flying. There is so much flow in this river. Yeah, it's a tricky river to raft, this one, because you don't get heaps of rain out this area. And so to try and time it, when you do get rain, you've also got the time to actually get out here. It's pretty tricky. So this lined up absolutely perfect. We were actually meant to do another river today, but the east coast has just caught so much rain in the last three weeks. But especially yesterday, it just absolutely bucketed down. So pretty much every river on the east coast is flooding at the moment. And this is probably the safest one out of all of them. I don't want to jinx myself, but yeah, I think it's meant to be a pretty good river. I honestly don't know if many people have actually rafted this river. There's like no information online about it. So yeah, I'd be interested to know if any of you guys have rafted it. Make sure you leave a comment below. I'm pretty keen to see who has. And in terms of obstacles, I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of rapids on this river. So I don't think it's like that many sort of boulder block ups, but there are a lot of cacharinas and like sort of little islands of cacharinas. So you've got to keep an eye out for that. That's going to be sort of the biggest worry. Making sure there's like no submerged logs or any strainers across the river. So timber in the river is always very dangerous. So just got to keep an eye out for that. And what a beautiful afternoon on the drive out here. It was just absolutely pouring rain, really foggy. It's starting to clear up, which is nice. I think it's meant to be pretty good weather for the next couple of days. I don't think we're expecting any more rain either. So the river is dropping, like it's dropped a fair bit since it peaked last night. And I've been a pretty sort of shallow, sandy river. This probably will drop pretty quickly over the next couple of days. So I think we've timed it really well. So we're just starting to leave some of the farmland. We're starting to make our way into the national park with all the rocky outcrops and entering the gorge section. I mean, it's such a special country around here. It's really beautiful. We've got the wattle out as well at the moment. So we've just got all these like pops of yellow all over the cliffs. Oh wow. There's also a wedge-tailed eagle as well. it looks like it's got mange, which seems to be a pretty common occurrence around this area. Oh, watch out for the tree, mate. Yeah, it's really sad to see. It seems like mange is just ripping through the wombat community around this area. Unfortunately, it seems like national parks don't really do anything about it, which it would be a pretty mammoth job for them to do, but still. Oh, there's an emu. I don't think I'll get it on camera, but there was an emu up in the bush just up there. Oh, there he is. Right up. Oh, it's got little babies. There's three emus and probably about 10 little emu chicks. That is so cool. Wow. I wish I had my other camera. Wow, that is so special. They're just up there behind the shrubs. All the kookaburras. Man, this is such an awesome place, eh? This is one of my favorite places. There's like just so much wildlife here. Birdlife, wildlife. There's another wombat just up there. Heaps of kangaroos, heaps of wombats, emus, lots of birds. It's just such a beautiful landscape too. Have like the nice sort of open grassy sort of bushland with these beautiful, beautiful material gums, awesome sandstone cliffs, caves galore. Very, very special place. So stoked. So, so stoked. So, these are the sections you've got to be careful on because the river's sort of being funneled into these tight little narrow sections and you can tell there's just a lot of timber sort of off to the side. You just want to hope that when you go around the corner, there isn't like a fallen log or anything. So, definitely got to have your wits about you because there's so much air flow in this river. It's like really pushing. So, if you were to get sort of just over there. Unfortunately, he looks pretty mangy as well, which is a shame. Heaps of kangaroos as well. I'm just coming to a really pretty section. It's beautiful. I mean, it's just such a cool little section to paddle. Just the cliffs are just so impressive. Lots of wildlife around. As I said, there's another kangaroo right there. It's honestly like, it's just full of wildlife, which is really cool to see. But yeah, I think we'll probably try and find a spot for camp pretty soon. It's starting to get a bit late in the day. It's probably getting close to four o'clock. It does look like we've got a bit of a storm brewing. I don't know if you guys can see the clouds behind me, but definitely some dark clouds moving in. There's no rain on the forecast, so we'll see whether this, it just blows over. Well, the rain's here, so I guess we may as well just keep paddling for a little bit longer. And once the rain stops, we'll, yeah, set up camp. Say he's getting a lot of gear wet. Where was this in the forecast? It's actually pretty heavy. I'm so glad I got these dry suits on. It would be absolutely freezing right now if it wasn't for these dry suits. Yeah, I know. Where's my Kubera, mate? Stupid bloody trucker's hat. What is this? What am I, American? That's honestly one of the best things about a Kubera is when it's raining, it just keeps the rain off your face. Like, they're so good. I generally don't wear the Kubera on my pack rafting trips because, like, if there is rapid, I don't want to lose it. And you've got to be so careful, like, going through these little casuarina stands. They just pop up so quickly and, like, you never know if there's just going to be, like, a submerged log under the water. You've got to be really careful. How bloody good is this? I know. All right, so we just, yeah, pulled the rafts up into this little grassy bank just up here and, man, it's a pretty epic spot. Got the awesome sandstone cliffs just going all the way down the river. It's really cool. I've actually been here before. Actually, camps just over there about three years ago. So, yeah, it feels good to be back. But it's about five o'clock, so sun's going to set in about half an hour. So I think we'll get the tent set up, get a fire going, and we'll crack a beer. All right, so for the tent for this trip, it's going to be using the Sea to Summit Alto One. And that's my sleep system. I've got the Sea to Summit Ethelite XR. I'm going to pair that with the Sea to Summit Ember Minus One Quilt and then just two Eros down pillows. All right, you know what time it is? Time to crack open a nice cold stone or wood. Although I don't know how cold it actually is, but it'll do the job. That was a good crack. It was. Well, cheers, mate. Yeah, cheers. That was an awesome day. Oh, so cool. Just, like, the country pass through. Yeah. Absolutely epic. It's beautiful. Even though the river's in flood, it's still a pretty cruisy paddle, eh? Totally. Like, the fact that it's got no rapids and you just got to watch out for the trees. But apart from that, yeah, it's been awesome. Absolutely flying by. I think it's about 45km's all up. We did about 10km's today. Actually, probably a bit more than 10km's. Yeah. Yeah. Add a bit of TST. Yeah, maybe 12km's. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll try and punch out maybe, like, yeah, 20 or 25km's or something tomorrow. So expect, like, because this river does drop pretty quickly, it probably will be a little bit lower than it was today, but fingers crossed it's, yeah, still runnable. All right, Lachlan, we're going to rip into some dinner. I've got, um, just some off-grid meals to cook up tonight. It's got the Wagyu Bolognese and then the potatoes and saltbush. Cheers. Man, that smells so good. Bon Appetit. Oh, that is way too hot. That is way too hot. Mate, I just saw you take that off the stove and let it sit for, like, one minute. Two seconds. And then rip into it. That's why I always, Laura always says I burn my mouth. Like, when I eat pizza, I eat it too quickly and I burn the roof of my mouth. Well, mate, at least you didn't burn the food. Yeah, exactly. For once I didn't burn the food. Well, good morning. Another beautiful day today. It's got the sun shining, although we woke up to a lot of fog. The whole place is just blanketed in fog, so it's actually a pretty nice way to wake up. There's heaps of birds around this morning as well, which is always nice. I just, uh, went down the river, got some water. It's definitely going to be putting the filter to work. It's, uh, pretty brown. The river's also dropped a fair bit. It's probably dropped probably close to, like, two foot, maybe, like, 50 centimeters or something like that. But it still looks like there's a fair bit of flow, so we should, um, should still be right. I think we've got around about, oh, around about 22km to do today. Uh, I calculated last night and, yeah, we did about 17km yesterday, so that was actually pretty good. And I only did that in a couple of hours, so I think we should be able to smash out these 22km, um, yeah, pretty quickly. And then that means tomorrow we will have about, like, four and a half km, so it's always good to try and have a, yeah, pretty short paddle on the last day, since you've got to do the car shuffle and stuff. So, yeah, we'll just, uh, filter up some water and we'll, uh, get some brekkie on. Well, after 36 years of not drinking coffee, I've, uh, recently come over to the dark side, and this morning we've got the Dog & Gun drip coffee, so we'll get the water on the boil. That's the brekkie. Just going to have some pancakes with, uh, some banana and some strawberries Well, we just saw another emu, but unfortunately couldn't get it on film. By the time I try and get my big camera out, they pretty much just bug it off. Like, they're really fast and elusive, so they don't sort of hang around. This is a shame. Hopefully I can get one on footage, because it'd be really cool to show you guys. There's so much wildlife on this trip, eh? Like, we have seen so many wombats and kangaroos and wedge-tailed eagles and emus. Like, I think that's the, what, the fourth emu I've seen. So it's a really cool trip for, yeah, Australian wildlife. And surprisingly, I haven't actually seen any feral animals. Like, there's been no pigs or anything, so that's really good to see. Man, what a beautiful day. It is stunning. I'm so stoked we decided to come here. Like I said, I've had this river on my list to pack off for a long time, but as I said, it's pretty hard to sort of line up. So the fact that it's worked out, oh man, it's been so good. It's a really beautiful place to pack off, and I honestly don't think very many people have done it today. So yeah, it's really cool. Like, there's just a wedge-tailed eagle up there near the cliff. Actually, there's a couple. There's just eagles everywhere. Just got to be so careful with these wrappers, just to make sure there's no sticks, especially with the water dropping about two feet. It has exposed it to a bit more wood in the water. I just can't get over how fun this place is to raft. It just feels like such an Australian river to pack off. I was just saying that, how you've got the sandstone cliffs, beautiful eucalypts, you've got the cacherinas on the riverbanks, emus, kangaroos, wombats, wedge-tailed eagles. There's something very Aussie about it. Man, bloody love this country, eh? She's definitely a special one. It feels so good being back out on another adventure. The old noggin has been doing a little bit tough recently. It's been a lot going on at home with work and stuff, and yeah, it's just been a lot going on in my head. So I really felt like I needed a good trip away, just to kind of reset myself. It's amazing when you're in a place like this, how present you can just be. You kind of just forget about the worries of modern day life, and you just learn to be very present and just something very calming about it. If only more people did this kind of stuff, I reckon the mental health issues that modern day society faces would definitely be a lot less. It's really been really good getting out here with Sam. I didn't even mention this yesterday, but he's got a YouTube channel himself. It's called Yondering Yowies. He's only started in the last year, and man, his videos are so good. So if you enjoy my videos, they're pretty similar kind of vibe to mine. So if you like my videos, I definitely think you'll like his. So yeah, definitely check him out. But it's also just good having another bloke to go on packraft trips. I can obviously enjoy getting out here with Matty, but Matty's travelling around the country at the moment, so it's hard to sort of tee up trips with him. And obviously with packraft trips, it's always good to do with another person, especially when it comes to the car shuttle. So it's been awesome really cool cave up here, so we've just put up the packrafts. We'll go check it out. Man, this looks like an epic little cave. A lot of animal traffic through here. Yeah. Man, this is an awesome little overhang. Nice and flat. The rock's got good coverage, so be out of the rain. It's so cool. There's just so much scat around in this cave. Trying to figure out whether it's a kangaroo or wallaby or wombat. There's some really fresh scat right there. It's probably from the kangaroo that just bounced away. Far out. Look what we just found. Looks like a kangaroo carcass. Whoa, that is insane. It's almost like mummified. It's about right for eating, mate. Want some ribs? There's some jerky. Man, that is insane. It's still got its skin on it. Sorry for all the kids that are watching, it's a little bit morbid, but man, it's absolutely fascinating. Wow. It's so dry here that it hasn't properly... Yeah, it's just preserved. Yeah. And I can feel the sinew and stuff from the tail. Man, that is honestly an incredible find. I've never seen anything like that before. Like to think this is how like archaeologists find, I guess, animals. Maybe you left that and no one else comes up here and that just gets covered in sediment and like the future AI will dig that up. The alien anthropologist coming down. What happened to this place? Yeah, that's incredible. I reckon if you dug down here, you'd probably find like similar things. Yeah, for sure. There's like some aboriginal artifacts like in these caves, like buried underneath the sand. Man, that's fascinating. Well, I've said it once and I'll say it again. This place is just so epic. It's just a really special place. It's got such a nice vibe to it. Definitely one of those places you could spend a good week exploring. Are you happy about us? Yeah. Having a good laugh at us. All right, well, we finally reached the spot we had marked on the maps and that's a pretty good one, eh? It's such a cool rock face. I think we'll try and find a good spot around here to sub-camp. Man, pretty epic, eh? So epic. It's so beautiful. Like up here, you've got so much nice like spots to camp up here. Nice and open and grassy. And this epic, epic cliff face. Hello, Mr. Wombat. You look pretty healthy. Oh, no. He's got some mange on him. Poor bugger. Such a shame to see. Honestly, breaks my heart to see the wombats out here with mange. Poor guy. Well, I'll tell you what. Definitely camped in worse spots. This place is very, very nice. Just even like the bushland behind me, it honestly feels like a park, eh? It is absolutely beautiful. But we've probably got about a bit over half hour till sunset. Very keen to get these dry suits off, get camped up, and get cracking on the stonewood. Cheers, mate. Cheers. We go town to town Landscapes change and the music fades in the end there ain't a sound Let's take a ride and roll the windows down I'll tell you what Definitely got very lucky with this campsite. This is uh Up there with one of the best I reckon for me this spot is the best. Yeah, it's a pretty awesome spot hey Man it's been an awesome trip hey, like the paddling today was so nice like the river is just at a perfect level It's such a cruisy river to paddle as well like you'd honestly do that in a canoe Like there's been pretty much no rapids like just gentle little runs like through like the cacharines and stuff But it's been a really nice river to run like especially considering. It's like in flood It's been such a such an awesome little trip. Scenery has just been amazing wildlife has been unreal I can't even tell you how many kangaroos you've seen like they're absolutely everywhere I've seen more wombats on this river than I've seen in my life. Every river bend there's like a wombat in it's cub Yeah, you saw some more emus today. Yeah, that's another one as well. So Very very special place hey. Yeah time to enjoy a beer around the fire. I think we'll get some grub on for dinner All right, so on tonight's menu We've got the off-grid good rice and not buttered chicken. I've never had this one before so pretty keen to see what it tastes like All right, well we've learned our lesson from last night. We've actually let my food cool down. Smells absolutely delicious Like I said haven't had this one before Sam was kind enough to give us some flatbread Bon Appetit That is some good taco Well welcome to another pretty foggy morning this morning I'll tell you what this place is like absolutely stunning in the fog. Just these beautiful old ancient trees like these trees must be so old and They just look so like magical in the fog. It's really cool And then you got the cliff face behind us as well as the fog side for this like you see the sunlight just like hitting the rock face and It's a pretty awesome campsite we found here Just can't get over just the bushland around here. It's just Honestly like a beautiful park so many birds out this morning as well, which is a really nice way to wake up We've got a cool cliff face just here so I might as well go for a bit of a wander and have a look at the caves Man, these are some awesome little caves They're really nice size for like one or two people It's got a really nice outlook looking out over the river and the cliffs as well That banana has definitely seen better days All right, so just had some breakfast, and I just started packing up our gear now We'll jump back on the river we have around about 5km to do today But the river has definitely dropped a fair bit since yesterday. It's probably dropped Probably like another foot or two so it's gonna be interesting to see how the paddling's going But yeah, like I said, we've got around about four and a half or five K's So pretty keen to get back on the water and soak up the last of this very beautiful place We've got beautiful sunny weather today, so should be a real nice paddle Another beautiful day for a paddle Weather is absolutely glorious at the moment I'm so glad about like I said the last couple of weeks probably the last month It's been so rainy on the east coast To see some nice sunny weather like this is a very welcome change I think we timed this paddle like so perfectly eh? We're getting flood, but just like a perfect level and then for the sun to come out while we're on the river Couldn't ask for anything better. It's been such a fun trip as well like just the campsites, the scenery, the wildlife It's been One of the best park rafting trips I've done I reckon Bit of a tight squeeze through here, a lot of casuarinas We done it Mate, we have done it Epic trip. Epic, absolutely epic All right guys We're all packed up as much as I don't want this trip to come to an end, unfortunately it has, it's been an incredible three days It's been Such beautiful country to paddle through and yeah, it's been an awesome trip It's been awesome teaming up with Sam, it's always good to get another park raft partner And if you guys like my kind of content definitely check out his YouTube channel It's called Yorung Yowies, and he makes some awesome videos. So, mate, until next time we'll definitely do another trip It's been an awesome one mate. Yeah, cool. All right guys. Catch you guys next time. Hooroo