|
Frankland River
October, 1995
by Peter Whitmore
Brian Morgan and I paddled
the 20km between Caldyanup Bridge and Elsie Brook Ford. The river
level was medium (up to the underside of Caldyanup Bridge) and
gave us good rock coverage on most rapids. The biggest rapid
appeared first, after a pleasant forty minutes flat paddle, just
as the sun came out. We inspected the ravine carefully and Brian
got the short straw, took his place below the first drop and
waited, throw- bag in hand. The top section had a convenient
side chute that fed me into the main mill-race and just gave
me time to slip into a narrow chute at the left side of a major
tree blocked muncher. Unfortunately the narrowness of the channel
gave me a long tailstand with no place to put a paddle - I decided
to swim but found the major muncher wanted a look at me - frightening
- but Brian beat it to me! Brian had a good look at the orchids
as we portaged his boat. We paddled on, minus one good paddle
and were treated to some good grade 2 rapids, one 2 metre waterfall
(which we deigned not to shoot in view of the crunchy bits at
the bottom) and one tree blocked rapid.
Total time: 5 hours.
Definitely a section of the Frankland
to be paddled, for confident paddlers. The ravine can be portaged.
A lot of dodgy, log chocked , enormous boulders could be quite
serious in higher waters. The stretch between Ford Road Ford
and Elsie Brook Ford was flat, uninteresting and had one or two
log chokes: 50 minutes.
|
