Packrafting the Franklin River Tasmania

I am just returning from packrafting the Franklin River in the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park in South West Tasmania with Roman Dial and his son Rome. The Franklin River is Australia's equivalent of the Grand Canyon for its sense of remote wilderness and challenging boating. We took 5 days exploring the 100 kilometer long canyon from the confluence with the Collingwood to Sir John Falls on the Gordon River. Click here for Roman's video from the adventure.

The rivers fast moving waters offer kayakers, rafters and especially packrafters with day after day of challenging white water. Our first camp, perfect for three people, was the Huon Pine camp ten kilometers down stream from the Collingwood-Franklin confluence. The Huon Pine that is this camps name stake is over a meter wide and is estimated to be almost 1,500 yeas old. This Huon, seen in the picture above, has a perfect view of the Franklin and grows just above the high flood zone 18 meters above the river level .

Scouting river left on the lower rapids of Thunder Rush in the Franklin Rivers Great Ravine. Our portage around this rapid involve a high portage requiring some fixed line and a short rappel back to the river.

The Franklin River was nearly destroyed in the 1980s  by a dam project the Tasmania Hydro Electric Commission was pursuing. The multi-year protest to save the Franklin River included a river blockade involving thousands of protesters. Over 2,000 people were arrested during the blockade and the demonstartion garnered international attention and galvanized Australian public opinion against the dam. The dam project was given the axe in 1983. The fight that kept the Franklin wild and un-dammed remains Australia's biggest environmental campaign. 

The five days of boating the 100 kilometers down the Franklin included negotiating many rapids, portages around several more savage rapids and log jams. The scenery included a wilderness of ancient trees with brown tannin stained waters passing under tree and moss covered cliff and rock.  It's amazing to think it came so close to being destroyed.

Every day involved negotiating many dozens of rapids. Every bend in the river seemed to greet us with the rivers roar of yet another drop. We would strain for a look to see what was ahead in the white water looking for logs or "sticks" that might mean a log sieve awaited us mid-rapid. We found the log jams to be the biggest hazard and every rapid, no matter how insignificant, required sharp eyes for snags and logs. This was expecially true on the first day when the river water levels were low. After the first nights rains the river came up covering many of the logs dangers. Below is Roman walking around a place named simply "log jam" in the Franklin River river guide.

The Franklin River drains a massive area so rains would and did raise the river a couple of times during our trip by many feet in just a few hours.  This is Rome running one of the many unamed rapids in high water.

In the photo below we are using the Parks decommissioned high portage around the rapid Thunderrush. Todays descents down the Franklin usually invlove 12 foot rafts for a ten day trip or self support kayak for a 4-5 day tript. Both craft are able to negotiate the higher water levels in the Great Ravine that sent us packrafters hiking around in big water.

Rome at the waters edge at the Arcade Camp. The water levels rose a meter before we set off from this camp. To see more photos from the Franklin River you can go to New Works on my web site (here). Roman has a day by day account of our Franklin trip on his blog (here)

Comments

[Adam Burling]

Spectacular pics!

[Brad Gingerich]

Bill, love the stories and pictures...its great to see you updating often!

[Ken]

Superb photos.

[Jeremy Wade Shockley]

Bill,

What a stunning set of images..these certainly astound!

I hope that you and your wife have been able to stay on high ground and out of harms way with the onslaught of storms hitting Australia this year.

Best, Jeremy

[Alastair Humphreys]

Wow!
Hardcore trip plus beautiful photos = rare and precious combination.

Now I'm more desperate than ever to get going on another packraft expedition... http://vimeo.com/16580852
Alastair

[Bill]

Alastair I Enjoyed your adventures in Iceland thanks for sharing the video.

[White water rafting trip]

I superb enjoyed your photos that was truly cool. I bet you really had fun and exciting experience that would last for a lifetime. I love your spirit! Your so cool!

[David Deland]

Wow! The best packrafting trips involve hiking too! So you traveled in threes, right? Who was taking all those photos, man? They're definitely superb, like what Ken said. One can really feel all of your hardwork and fun while packrafting the Franklin River!

[kym]

I did this trip in 1982, just after riding around Tasmania and protesting against the dam.

It had to be ones of the best times of my life. By the end of it we were living solely on muesli as we had run out of all our other food. We were so happy to finally see the Dennison Star and get picked up and treated to a warm cup of (something)

The river was amazing place but very dangerous. We nearly lost rafters on two occasion, once from falling in while trying to ferryglyde back from the edge of an extremely large water fall - just before Rock Island Bend - and the other when the river began to rapidly flood from rain.

Thanks for the memories.