Bill Hatcher Photography

Packrafting in Australia

I thought it was pretty cool that Australia Geographic Outdoor recently republished my packrafting story on their web site that I wrote for their print magazine. The story is about the packrafting guru Roman Dial. In my article Roman talks about packraftings past as well as the future of packrafting this is a link to the story on the Outdoor website.

Just in the past couple of years I've seen packrafting really catching on downunder. From what I have seen recently on rivers and in the Australia media Alpacka rafts, the company that's on the cutting edge of packraft design, must be selling a lot of their boats to adventurers in Australia. With so many rivers located in remote and roadless areas and accessable only by foot packrafting makes a lot of sense in Australia. I see a very bright future for packrafting in both Australia and New Zealand. Here's a link to the video from the packraft trip Roman, Cody and I did down the Franklin River a couple of years ago.

Urban Rock in Brisbane, Australia

This past weekend I was urban cragging at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane. Brisbane is Queensland's biggest city and on my first visit to the city I discovered it has a great climbing area right in the city limits. So on my second visit to the city I brought along a rope and some draws (maybe a couple of cams or stoppers would have been nice as well). The crag is located at Kangaroo Point and the 15 meter high cliffs along the Brisbane River is in clear view of about a million office workers who occupy the skyscrapers just across the way.

 
On the warm winters weekend Melanie and I visited the crag it was like opening day of a salmon run.

Cockatoo Island

Are adventure photographers inherently selfish people? Maybe we are. For the last few weeks I have been enjoying climbing, hiking, paddling and biking all over New South Wales, Australia, but you don't see any photographic proof of that here. Did I make any photos while I was out, a few, but most of the time my hands were full of sweaty bike bars or trying to

Photo of the week: Murrumbidgee River

Sea kayaking upstream on the Murrimbigee River past a big red gum tree lining the bank near Gundagai, New South Wales. In places the strong river currents would grab the bow of the boat. Going upstream was a practice of eddy hopping to avoid fighting the strong currents in the main stream. Paddling down stream was much easier, you just needed to watchful and not wrap the boat on submerged logs. Photo was made using my Nikon D-3s with the 24-70 2.8 at 24 mm.

 

 

Murray River after the floods

I just returned from my second visit to the Murray River in Victoria. The Murray is Australia's longest river and the level of the river is just dropping now after many months of flooding.I wanted to see for myself what the river looks like after the flood. Many areas are still not accessable by road so a boat is the best way to view the river. The photos here are of the river red gum trees that line the banks of the Murray below Barmah. It was remarakable to see the tangled root systems of these tough old trees.