The Upper Cobungra In Flood, September 8th, 2001

By Jeffe Aronson

Standing, panting, in the dying light on this tiny island surrounded by a raging torrent of brown flood waters, all I can manage is to shake my head. Glancing at my now useless paddle, I hurl it like a spear into the bushes on the far side of the river, grunting like a Neanderthal, hoping my comrades will find it and realize that at least I haven’t drowned.

Yet.

Simple misadventures, skewed events piling one on top of the other, build in force and consequences like a river in flood to eventually create havoc. Once immersed in this flood, all one can do is survive. Or not. I should know better, damn it.

The early spring weekend began innocently enough. For a change, I wasn’t working as a guide on the class III Mitta Mitta. It was raining…hard. I fully expected some good high water on the Cobungra, the local and well-known class 4-5 creek that flows into the Mitta. I called Yoda on Friday night to coax him into a paddle. He wasn’t sure he could make it, but would let me know. Early Saturday morning, I got a call from one of the boyos at Peregrine. The Mitta had risen overnight to above their flood level safety cut-off. They wanted me to safety kayak along with them and their clients, just in case. No problem. I love getting paid to do what I love to do. See you at put-in.

The day on the Mitta passed uneventfully. Most of the rapids were washed out by the high water, and happy clients and guides hiked out at the Black Duck Hole for the evening festivities. The Clients were taken back to Omeo in a bus, to dry off and prepare themselves for the next day’s action in the Mitta Gorge. Tank and Spanna drove me back towards Anglers Rest, my home, fifteen minutes in the opposite direction. My wife Carrie and I are a quarter of the local population.

“Isn’t that your car?”, asks Spanna.

I look ahead and see Ruby, our red Landcruiser, barreling down upon us, but Carrie apparently isn’t in it. “What the…?” As they careen past, I glimpse Fraser behind the wheel, and Yoda is waving frantically to catch our attention. Fraser is a Melbourne paddler with whom I first ran the Cobungra last year. The successful completion of that run was one of the few times I’ve seen him overly expressive, doing tailspins and surfing holes. Yoda has just begun paddling, after a career as a dirt bike racer. They both work occasionally as river guides. Needless to say, Fraser, like probably most of us, is inclined to be a bit more conservative than Yoda, who got his nickname from a pair of extra large ears sticking out from his shaved head, not necessarily for his mature wisdom. They are polar opposites in disposition, good friends, and outrageous characters…just the kind of people I like. Fraser’s Whiplash and my Phat (kayak brands) are on the roof rack. We pull over, they back up with a screech in the middle of the road. Beaming and all teeth, they inform me that the Cobungra is “Stonkin…nearly over the top ofthe gauge…wanna go for a paddle?”

Now, I should say in my defense that under normal circumstances, I would have politely told them how I, too, was keen to paddle the Cobungra at high water, perhaps tried to dribble a little saliva to prove it, but I’ve been paddling all day long, the days are winter-short, it’s 3:30 pm, and I really should be going home for a hot shower and dinner. But I don’t. They’d just driven 3 _ hours to get here, on my invitation from last night. Though I have a slightly uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, I can’t let them down. We transfer my Rocket and still wet paddle gear from the rack on Tank’s microbus, and wave them goodbye. Now, Tank’s a darned good paddler. He’d understand these things. Spanna’s no slouch herself. They say; “Have a great paddle”. Yoda says; “No worries”. They’re giving each other the sidelong glance and crooked smile as they leave us. I know what that means.

Back at our shed/home on the Bundara River, just over the ridge from the Cobungra, Carrie is being very helpful in getting our gear together, and giving me sidelong glances. She’s not about to spoil the party, but her instinct, like mine, is glowing amber.

She drives us to Smith’s Crossing, just up from our place then down a convoluted four wheel drive dirt track through P.J. and Katherine’s cattle property. We put in, all in a rush, Kel paddling my Rocket because his micro-shit (as I have nicknamed his tiny, thin-hulled rodeo boat) is clearly not up to the task. Even to brave, young, strong, ignorant Kel. I’m in my Phat. Nice volume, very forgiving. Carrie waves us off at 4:15. It’s dark by around 6 this time of year. I’ve paddled this stretch at normal levels in just over an hour. Not much scouting for me at normal levels on this now familiar run. Only 6 major rapids to be concerned with; Mal’s Folly, Double-Dip, Mother Rock, The Long and Winding Road, Cobungra Falls, and Owl’s Eyes. An easy 2 kilometer paddle out from there to pull up directly onto the lawn and a celebration beer at the Blue Duck Inn, where Carrie will be cooking dinner. She’s to wait till 7 pm before she calls the posse.
Only then do I notice the roar of the flood.

………………..

Mal’s Folly goes with little trouble, the rocky rapid covered well with foam and water. We send Fraser to scout Double-Dip, just in case there’s a river-wide hole at the bottom of the second vertical fall. No problem, and over we go, our boats doing tailspins and getting completely buried at the bottom. Very pushy, but manageable. Then we pull into the scout pool at the top of Mother Rock.

This is the most technical of the 6, with a tight entry requiring grace and skill, and positioning oneself just so at the brink of a steep rocky drop, ready to back ferry the instant one hits the bottom so as to avoid the next obstacle a boat length downstream and directly ahead; a huge rock face and log sieve. Then a steep but enjoyable technical paddle through the middle section and bottom chute against the left wall. Exhilarating at any time, not something anybody would want to swim. Those wishing to portage the top part may usually do so easily from the scout pool, perching at the top of a steeply angled boulder and sliding down the rock in their boat about 3 or 4 vertical meters to a safe pool below, where the last part of the middle section and the bottom chute may be run.

The light is beginning to fade, a tad too soon. Water is pouring…no….gushing….over the usual portage perch. For the first time, I notice the cliffs are unclimbable on this side of the river if one wants to portage the bottom half. I manage to wade along the edge of the waterfall going over the perch, towing my boat and trying to keep it from going over, or pushing me over, the falls into the middle of Mother Rock rapid. Glancing over the lip, I nod to my waiting colleagues and jam my boat onto a grass hummock. “I think it’ll go”. I help Fraser get into his boat and shove him over the falls into the eddy below. I then grab an overhanging tree limb, holding my paddle between thumb and forefinger, and slowly steady myself into my kayak, attach the skirt one-handed, give a hoot to Fraser waiting in the pool below, and go. “Whoooeeee”… Landing with a splash, I steady myself with a brace stroke, glance at Fraser, and paddle off.

It is only when I am just about on it that I see it; a huge “pillow” of water slamming into the left-hand cliff at the bottom of the final chute. It looks like a feeding whale shark, powerful and alive and it looks as if it could swallow me. I frantically back ferry right, aiming to miss the pillow and catch a small but surging eddy against the right cliff so as to take a moment to scout the route from my boat. Fortunately, just as I’m easing right, I notice a perfect slot dead ahead, with a soft landing into the eddy below the rapid, and take it.

Fraser is next, and he rams right through the left-hand slot, straight into the pillow. Cool...now I’ll get to see what it will do to a man and a boat. He disappears utterly for a couple of seconds, then shoots out like a rocket vertically into the air, clearing the water, hull against the pillow on the wall, then goes end over end and upside down. I hold my breath, sort of in sync with him, and then he rolls up, smiling, and enters my eddy. “Wow” is as articulate as he can get, for the moment. Then Yoda appears. I guess he’s made the tree-branch move cum vertical waterfall slide okay. He’s backing up towards the right away from the left wall. Only, he doesn’t quite make it all the way right, goes over, then drops between two large boulders through a tight and steep chute into the eddy below, all upside-down. We wait a second or two, and his head pops up beside the boat.

…………”Bugger…Swimmer!”………….

We help him into the hundred centimeter deep foam of an eddy where he can get ashore and empty his boat of water, and paddle off a short distance to scout the entry to The Long and Windy Road. It seems like he’s taking an awfully long time…then he arrives. “I lost your bloody drain plug. It gushed out with the water.” He’s covered the drain hole in the stern with duct tape wound around the boat several times, which should keep most of the water from pouring in, he hopes. For a time.

Three to go.

This next rapid is long and I usually skirt it to the right, but it’s not too steep and we get through it with little drama, though we’re still being buffeted by large hydraulics. At this level, whatever it is, things move rather fast, leaving little time for error or second thoughts. And, of course, it’s getting dark.

Next comes Cobungra Falls…all 3.5 meters of it. No problem…we’ll take the right hand chute and bypass the vertical bit. We still have to drop the required total of 10 or 12 rocky meters or so for the entire rapid, but we’re sort of in a hurry. No time to scout the falls part. The bypass is usually very steep and minutely technical. At this level it shouldn’t be too bad, and the large steep sideways slide rock at the bottom of this chute, which empties out into the final 40 meters of steep technical rapid, should be easier to catch, thus missing the ugly notch between boulders on the left. That will leave only Owl’s Eyes to run, then the exit paddle. I enter first, looking over my shoulder and telling Yoda and Fraser to “stay tight”, which is a manly metaphor for; “Please don’t leave me alone!”. A startled platypus swooshes the surface and dives right next to me as I enter the turmoil. Almost immediately, as I take a stroke with my left blade, something underwater, maybe a rock, maybe a branch, grabs my blade and nearly yanks the paddle right out of my hands. I go over, holding onto the paddle for dear life, into the inky blackness. Now, I know how narrow, how incredibly shallow, how outrageously rocky and steep this falls bypass normally is. I do not intend to hang out upside down here while setting up for a roll. An image of me, floating upside down and unconscious from hitting an underwater rock with my face, in the dark, flits by.

I pull the spray skirt and exit, praying that I can reach the island to my left pronto. Miraculously, my feet hit the bottom and I’m waist deep in a micro eddy, and step fluidly and effortlessly onto dry land.

Which is where I was at the beginning of this saga.

I’m looking around, still shaking my head. The other’s zip past in the gathering darkness, having only a fleeting moment to glance wild-eyed and gob-smacked at me as they pass. “Get my boat”, I yell, pointing downstream. It’s not as if they could stop in that chaos, anyway. And they’re gone. I’m alone. On an island. It’s getting dark. My boat’s gone. Water is raging in my ears, and I’m surrounded. On the right, a terribly long, steep, rocky (even at this level) torrent. On my left, a swift branch-choked current heading directly over the waterfall just below. Leaving the right side as impossible, I walk up and down the tiny space of earth allotted to me, seeking a relatively safe place to cross to shore. At least from there, even if nothing else works out, I can hump it up and over the 200 meter high ridge in my wetsuit booties, an hour’s walk directly home, sort of.

I’m hesitating, though. It’s just a touch too swift to wade, too deep. Just a tad too wide to leap. The poor light is skewing my depth perception. I realize that every moment’s hesitation makes it worse, makes it darker, allows fears and self doubt another stab at my poise. I say; “Son of a bitch” under my breath, thinking of how my friend Peter gets a kick out of it when I say that.

So I pick a spot and leap, surface diving into a tiny eddy, ferry swimming across the current, then clutching at some branches on shore and scrambling up. Thank God for drysuits.

Now I can think of the others, and my boat. I begin scrambling and stumbling downstream, searching for any sign of them.

Then I hear a whistle, and see a light colored helmet dimly across the river, more or less where I’d chucked my paddle an eon ago. I whistle back, patting my head (the universal river signal for “okay”), and point downstream to where we can get closer to each other and powwow.

I see Yoda in an eddy there, just above Owl’s Eyes. Fraser appears with my paddle.

To Yoda; “Didja get my boat?”

“I couldn’t. It got away. I couldn’t plow it into the eddy.”

Me, stunned; “Plow it?! You mean you don’t have a tow-strap??”

“Um. Nope. Couldn’t afford one”

I take a deep breath, as Fraser describes Yoda’s run past the buried notch. A hydraulic backlooped him in a sensational arc, after which he rolled in the maelstrom. I can’t admonish a hero, can I?

They’re both on the right side of the river, where I could hike to the dirt track leading to “The Duck”. 45 minutes, tops. Fraser undoes his throw bag, as I bash my way through some brush and lurch into an eddy. He hits me, from across the river, right in the nose. Then says “Oh. Sorry!” I say; “You gotta be kidding.” I jump in and he swings me across the strong current and over to them. Normally, I’d have my torch. It’s in my boat. There’s just enough light for them to run Owl’s Eyes and get out.

Fortunately, Yoda has a torch in his kit, and he gives it to me. I hurriedly say “Give me a whistle blast if you find my boat, and I'll come back down to you. Otherwise, I’m outta here for the road and the Duck.”

I watch them run Owl’s Eyes, getting thoroughly slammed and trashed in the holes and enormous pillows coming off the wall on the left. Yoda gets backlooped yet again, taking an eternity to roll. But they make it through and into class 2 territory. Not 3 minutes into my hike up the hill, I think I hear a whistle, and head back down. Sure enough, I barely discern Fraser’s boat on the far side of the river in the bushes, and Fraser is floundering upstream through the thick scrub towards the faintest of yellow splotches in some snags just underwater. My Phat is yellow. I hike down to the micro eddy against the short cliff where Yoda is waiting. “How ya doin?” “Yeah. Okay.” 10 minutes later, which seems like hours in the last of the light, down comes Fraser in my Phat. I figure the fastest way is for him to stay in my boat, then for me to clutch my stern grab loop and jump in, and for Fraser to ferry me back across the current once again to the left shore, then for me to bushwhack around the cliffs back upstream to Fraser’s Whiplash, which I’ll paddle down.

Once again, in the drink, across the river, and up the steep bank. Stumbling around now in the dark, climbing short steep cliffs of broken granite and tripping over bushes and branches. For the first time today, I start to really curse under my breath. Immediate peril over, exhaustion is seeping into my every pore. I guess I finally feel like I can let myself release just a little bit. Finally, backtracking to a place I’d already passed twice, I just make out the dark red outline of Fraser’s kayak, crash through the scrub to it, get in, entomb myself with the spray skirt, and paddle down in the dark. I can just make out their helmets faintly bobbing like the flood foam and do an eddy turn to join them.

“Whew. Lets rock and roll, amigos. Watch for low branches and shallow rocks. Stay close.”

In this way, we make the final couple of kilometers by feel and intuition, occasionally bumping into rocks with our boats, overhanging tree limbs with our helmets. Finally, we see the lights of the cozy little pub on the bank, and start to howl and laugh. Cackle, more like. Some of the Duck’s guests are down by the barbeque near the river bank. They look up, tongs in hand, flabbergasted at the three stark raving apparitions in the dark. Lunatics. We hit the bank and exit our boats, dragging them up the finely mown grass to the front verandah, where some other kayakers who have just paddled the Mitta greet us and demand The Story. Fraser checks the gauge; “Wow. One point nine meters. Just below the top!” Normal levels are 1.2 to 1.4. He then starts to scold Yoda for not having proper safety gear. Lecture, more like. Yoda glances at me for comfort, but I’ve got other scoldings in mind, and scoot inside, knowing Carrie will be nervous as hell. A dozen people at the bar, drinking and laughing, couples at tables eating steaks or anxiously waiting to do so. I find Carrie in the kitchen, and glance up at the clock. 7:15. She’d seen us coming down in the dark. Heard our howls of delight at being so alive. This was lucky, as she’d just told Graham, the owner, that he’d have to cook up the steaks himself, as her man wasn’t back and she was going out to find him. And break his neck. We embrace.

Back in the pub, a circle of paddlers huddle around soggy us as we disrobe and hang out by the fire. Jimmy behind the bar grumbles about them damn damp kayakers, and we recount the day’s tales. They, of course, have a few of their own, and thus the night ends.

Epilogue:

The sole of my left foot has been sore ever since….now 7 months on. I don’t know what the heck I stepped on in my booties that night. It must’ve been a whopper, but the adrenaline was pumping and I felt no pain. I sold Yoda my spare tow line the very next day, and after a few phone calls and emails, actually secured payment. He’s now guiding some pretty respectable rivers, and has learned and grown and will no doubt surpass my guiding skills sooner than I could wish. Bastard. My Phat had a few dents, but nothing that after some TLC would render it unsafe for future paddling. Fraser went back to teaching rolling classes and taking students out to learn river running for the Victorian Canoe Club. Not two months after our little epic a kayaker got pinned on the lower Cobungra and drowned, taking far fewer chances and making far fewer stupid mistakes than we did that night. Life’s funny that way. I’m sorry for him, but thank my lucky stars to have survived to see another river. In the light.

Jeffe