Bikerafting the Acheron River at Taggerty: abandon the quest !

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Sometimes you have to call it quits. The Acheron river, located in Victoria near Taggerty was choked with trees. We went perhaps too far before deciding the mission needed to be aborted.
 

For our second day of adventure, we thought it might be interesting to explore either the Rubicon or Acheron River.  Matt looked on his phone and the Acheron river looked doable.

The blog looked good, showing several kayaks.  Phones: they are good, but with the small screen and tiredness after a day, it easy to be misled. It turns out that the blog was about an ongoing journey by a group to paddle 550km of the river from Eildon to the Murray river (something that I wish to do).  

It would have been useful to have seen this entry in the Waterways guide.

Hindsight is a good thing ! On with the tale. Here is our route plan in red and overlay of what was done in purple. The application I am using is Gaia on my Galaxy Android phone. I am very happy with this app as it provides very detail maps and route tracking / creation tools.


We left camp at about 9:30am and headed for the Alexandra boat ramp. Our destination from there is to Taggerty, then we intend paddling down the Acheron river,  rejoin the Goulburn and exit at the boat ramp in Alexandra.  The ride started out quite flat, then we hit a very steep rise which made sure you knew that your legs were needed for something.  We all made it in varying times and rested briefly at the lookout.

 

The ride time was about an hour with a 15 minute or so break.

 
It was time for a couple of niggling issues with the bikes, this time it was me and Tanya's turn. Tanya had issues with here gear changes, she was on the learning curve working out how to change gears and also her gears were changing of their own accord. Matt to the rescue there, with fresh knowledge on the intricacies of derailleur adjustment it was rectified quickly. With some quick tips on my behalf, the correct gears were chosen. My issue: the cable had broken off on its connection to the derailleur. We managed to adjust the travel to get 6 gears instead of 9 (hard time on the hill !). 
 
The message here is that bikes should be serviced before going on these adventures. Lucky for us, we had tools and the wherewithal to fix the breakdowns, but we all could have done a little more to avoid the issues.

Taggerty is a small village, we didn't explore it in any detail as our interest was to get on the river. Just under the bridge is an access area to the river, where we assembled the rafts and mounted the bikes on them.
 

We were warned by one of the visitors that the river was unpassable, as a couple of their friends tried to canoe it and turned back.  Looking at the flow of the river and assessing the fact that we were in packrafts rather than canoes, we thought we'd give a go anyway. There was a  bit of debris at the bridge pylon, but nothing to worry ourselves with or so we thought.

 
The start was quite pleasant, the river being narrow is probably better describes as a creek.


We passed a couple of caravan parks and, as we often found, gained curious stares or questions from people as we passed by.

After we passed the caravan parks, foliage started to impede our progress. Sometimes we could paddle past, other times it was just a short portage on the bank. For some reason it seemed that the left bank always was the better bank to clamber out of.

Even a complete blockage wasn't an onerous task to get around.

 

It is an adventure, on a warm day, the portages easy with the farms running up to the river. We were enjoying it, especially when the river cleared and the odd small rapid presented itself.


My main concern was ensuring that we would get out in time before dark. We have been lucky so far, but anything could happen to cause a big delay. It was evident that 16km of river was not going to be finished before dark, let alone the additional 6km run to Alexandra bridge once we hit the Goulburn river. We decided that we should exit at the nearest street, this being Kerrs Road.

 

That decision was made early for us by a massive tree blocking our way (see the first picture on the top of this post).

Matt put up his drone to a) play with the drone and b) validate our thoughts about making an exit and locating the road. I must say,  I am impressed with the clarity and potential usefulness of the drone for the likes of river inspection. Meanwhile Tonya and I checked out the scene from a closer point of inspection


The best time to leave a party is when you have had a good time. Matt's vessel is quite well laden with the 29er touring bike and is not so easy to portage through vegetation. Tanya's vessel only had two attachment points for here bike as the glue failed on the other two.  

You have to be careful walking along the bank as the wombat holes are massive and sometimes hidden when abandoned.

Our early exit meant reassembling the bikes and riding back.  A mere 12km or so, easy !

One of the reasons I am doing this trip is to work out my van build. Recently I decided not to have a built-in shower due to the room it takes.  Instead I purchased an 'Evershower' which folds into a case roughly 500mm square and uses only 3 litres of water because it recirculates. No shame here - all three of us used the shower, and we can all attest to how good it feels to freshen up after a couple of days on the river adventuring.  

Yea was nearby, Tanya gave us a call and asked if we would like some beer and burgers as she stopped in on the way to camp. Acceptance by both Matt and me. Not one for junk food, but .....

All in all, we had a great day. It was a good fum adventure. We left at the right time and could relax, enjoy the evening, chat and even play cards. Not too late though, we were all in bed about 9pm: I wonder why ?

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