More on FNQ, Crocks included

By Jez

Day 3
A rest day which consisted of waking up late, eating lots of food and taking on the Barron River. A nice easy river with only one rapid of significance, however this was significantly low at 17 Meg. The rooster tail rapid required a good line to miss the manky rocks. We ran this river twice, the second time the power station fired up to 60 Meg which really got the river pumping. Not a bad river at this level. We paddled on into the dark and were just about to take out when I noticed something breaking the waters surface at our desired take out. A double take later, and I noticed it was a crock just chilling next to my boat. I decided that this was not the ideal take out and paddled on down to the beach quite rapidly. A change of shorts later and we were high fiving all the way home. Sometimes you get worked by a rapid, sometimes a rock, but in FNQ it’s the crocks you got to avoid, they can eat you and your boat….and your little dog too, there’s no place like home. But seriously this was one of the scariest moments in my paddling life.

Day 4
Well every day so far has been epic so we made an effort to have just one day of normality on the Tully river, and it was. Just a good day of paddling, with a few decent rapids in spectacular jungle forest. Great weather, even when it’s raining its still high 20’s C. T-shirt weather. About half way down I had my good karma moment, paddling in the jungle with spectacular mountains all around. A time to stop and smile at the surrounds, thinking to myself how great life really is. Every paddler has moments like these, sitting in your boat with your friends, admiring the scenery and feeling content with life. Some people go paddling for the adrenalin, some for the physical benefits, however all paddlers have a common content feeling, that paddling maketh the person. It completes people. It creates a community of happy people, who are satisfied with that moment in time and today I got that feeling. I am content with my life.

Day 5
D-day is upon us. Today is where we got out our cameras and fired up some great falls. A nice drop, with awesome access and great footage for the film, "We’re going there anyway" a film by Skippy Films. Not only did we fire up a big waterfall in the day, but we also hit it up at night under lights. That’s right, a bit of night boating under lights just for the flick. Looks awesome! Unfortunately on one of my runs I did get a little over vertical and landed heavily on my head. A brief black out and getting winded were the only small injuries from this drop. No worries mate.

Today we also fired up something else which was very very cool. You will have to wait and read all about it in a yack mag.

It seems that locals to FNQ are all about small boats. They play and creek in small boats. I didn’t see one full on creek boat up there, instead FNQ locals prefer smaller playboats with lots of rocker to get around the narrow boulder gardens that are prevalent. In saying this, my Jackson Kayak Rocker which was borrowed off Ben from Wavemonkey really did me well. It boofed great, had some awesome speed and loved the big drops. The Rocker is the perfect creek boat.

All in all FNQ Australia is a spectacular place to go boating. It has it all, from easy river boating to tough creeking, it’s there for the taking. Access is somewhat an issue. As the rivers get harder, the access also gets harder as most of the harder rivers don’t have tracks in. The locals are used to tough access, and I guess after hitting up a few of the runs, so did I.

I’m now off to the Compete in the World Rafting Championships in Korea. Packing as much as I can into life.

Keep on boating
jez
Jackson Kayak Coordinator of Karma