An ode to the sun
Her vibrance shines above me,
As she casts her light below,
Her rays are bright and warming,
And the horizon is aglow.
Her light dances on the water,
I feel her warm embrace,
I hear the forest waking,
And the spirit of this place.
As she sweeps across the land,
She will calm and she will soothe,
She brings us strength to pack our wet shit,
And forwards we will move.
-A.H. 6/12/2025
The mighty Arthurs Range rising up from Arthur Plains. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.
The South-West welcomed us with open arms. It was the first day of November, 2025 and the previous three days were the driest, most stable weather we had in over a month. According to our forecast, we would have two more days of dry weather, and then it would pack it in for us.
It had been a wet and windy spring, so the forecast came without much of a surprise on our part. There had also been a number of deaths in the Tasmanian bush in the months prior, and some members of the paddling community expressed their concern about our packrafting trip intentions. A big thanks goes to Vicky Bonwick from the Derwent Canoe Club for providing us with her meticulous notes on the Crossing and Davey Rivers and helping us prepare for our trip in general. Vicky probably knew she couldn’t talk us out of doing the trip, so she helped to make sure we wouldn’t die out there at least. But she did tell us she thought that ‘paddling alone is suicide, paddling with two is suicide with a witness’. I asked Gabe before the trip if he thought we could run the Crossing, just the two of us. He said it should be okay as long as we are sensible. That sounded pretty sensible to me, so the trip was on.
Gabriel Matuszak, and yours truly, on day one of our ‘raftwalking’ trip through the South-West. Looking fresh! Photo by Amy Hamilton. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.
Our plan? Simple in theory. Gabe and I would start at Scotts Peak dam, walk in on the Port Davey Track, then raft the Crossing and Davey Rivers, cross Port Davey in our rafts, then rendezvous with Grant Dixon near Melaleuca who had prior commitments in the first week of November and couldn’t join us for the first leg of our trip. We would then continue together as a trio, paddling across Bathurst Harbour and up the Old River to the base of Federation Peak, from where we would ascend Gorilla Ridge, then drop off the Eastern Arthurs to paddle the Cracroft and Huon Rivers out to Tahune Airwalk.
We allowed 8 days for the first leg of the trip, 11 days for the second leg, so 19 days in total. Grant was to bring us 11 days of supplies when he flew into Melaleuca, so we only had to carry eight days of food in on the Port Davey with Gabe. Nevertheless, our packs weighed close to half our body weight on day one.
Gabe doing the slog on the Port Davey. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.
It was a noble, if somewhat silly premise for a trip. Climb Gorilla Ridge with full bushwalking and whitewater kit and a week’s worth of food? I really thought I was done with carrying forty kilo packs up Federation Peak. I thought I had left that part of me behind with Winter on the Blade.
But when Grant proposed the idea for that second leg of the trip neither Gabe nor I could resist. The promise of seeing a particularly remote corner of the South-West lured us on. And the threat of the Gorilla would loom ahead of us for the entirety of our trip.
Some more sunshine on day two of our trip. It would be some time before we saw the sun again. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.
-A.S. Sandy Bay, Nipaluna/Hobart. 6/12/2025