After a sleep in (I am on holidays from work), I left home at midday to drive down to Huonville for some kayak training. The state championships for wildwater are coming up next week on the upper Mersey River. I don't have a proper DR boat and only have a plastic wavehopper, so I loaded it onto the car and headed off.
I was thinking of taking the wavehopper to the Mersey just for some experience until I get a real DR kayak.
I initially drove to the Huon River at Judbury and was going to head up river for a few hours and then back down to the car, but when I got there I decided to continue to Southwood.
At Southwood there were signs saying 'Tahune Air Walk 14km'. I decided to continue there and paddle upstream from there instead.
I crossed over the bridge heading for Tahune and was surprised that the next sign said 'Tahune Air Walk 15km'. The road actually took about 35km because Edwards Road (forestry road) was closed and there was a big detour.
When I arrived at the Tahune Air Walk area there is a big boom gate blocking the road where you could previously drive to the river edge. There was a sign on the boom gate that it would be locked at 5pm. It was now about 2pm so I opened the boom gate and drove to the river.
As I unloaded the kayak a forestry worker came over telling me to take my car back out. I explained about the sign saying it was open until 5pm but they were incapable of understanding english.
After moving my car and having another argument with another forestry spastic I got onto the river.
I headed up for 4.5km in my wavehopper to Riveau rapids. It took a fair bit of effort to get up most of the rapids in the slow wavehopper but it was a quick trip back down.
Overall it was a long drive but an enjoyable paddle on a beautiful river.
