Personal Blog

Daily ramblings from the Wakool River

I'll just note that I did these in fairly high flows and I'd expect these to be much more difficult in lower flow conditions.

It felt like déjà vu car shuffling between Tocumwal and Boundary Bend, camping with my old grumpy friend before paddling down to Picnic Pt before leaving the Murray and down to BB via Deniliquin and Kyalite. However once on the water I only repeated a small fraction of the previous trip.

I detoured down Ulupna Creek that I had overlooked in my previous paddle. This was a fantastic little anabranch that would be suitable for any boat in high flow. No fences nor low bridges and minimal snags. Even paddling at full speed, I saw four koalas and lots of other wildlife on the short detour. Expect this to take two to three hours depending on how often you get your camera out.

I took Gulpa Ck that leaves the Murray in the middle of Picnic Pt just downstream of the start of the Edwards. This traverses the western edge of the old Murray floodplains and being the last of northern distributaries, I believe it also marks the end of the Barmah Choke. The first section is fairly straight as it follows a path cut through the swamp to Mathoura before it follows a more natural course north where it rejoins the Edwards about 15 km from Deniliquin. While it was a nice paddle, it was much snaggier and less aesthetic than the upper Edwards. Along with the regulator, there are a couple low bridges that could require portages along with at least one log portage and a short willow section that fully clogs the main stem. Gulpa added around 25 km to the trip compared to taking the Edwards.

The Wakool itself starts just downstream of Deniliquin, around the "20 km weir" marker. The big billabong that is just downstream appears to be an older path that seemed to join back to the flowing channel via a shallow section even though the Edwards was in minor flood.

The Wakool followed the same general pattern as the Edwards with decreasing banks that effectively disappeared creating a floodplain before these slowly increased in size again. It was generally bigger, slightly slower and harder as well as being significantly longer. The regulator was fully submerged as were all fences albeit I scraped the top of a couple. In lower flows expect some fences near the start and about 50 km downstream. Snags weren't an issue with a high flow but zigzagging around these did slow my progress on the first couple of days, and these will likely be problematic on a low flows. Doing the Wakool is around 40 km longer than doing the Edwards.

Entering the Murray I met up with Mike and Craig who had just finished the lower 'biggee where we camped on banks opposite the confluence. Finishing this leg, we popped over to Picnic Pt to paddle down the Murray to Barmah via the narrows to see this section in high flow. We had an amazing red gum floodplain from about 4 km upstream of the lakes all the way to the final bend before Barmah. I would definitely look at camping early or be ready to paddling across the old lake bed down to Barmah to avoid any difficulties camping in this section. Large amounts of wildlife including roos, wallabies and koalas as well as feral horses and foxes.

I must say it was great to paddle with some others after doing so much solo paddling recently.

Now, what is that third blue line I saw in the maps of the Edward-Wakool basin…

Map of Key Locations

• Toocumwal
• Picnic Point
• Mathoura
• Deniliquin
• Kyalite
• Boundary Bend
• Campsites
• Water Features