“A whoop of joy means it’s high, and a cry of despair means it’s low,” I announced to Pete and Tyrone as I bounded off down the hill to find the river, leaving them to finish setting up the tents. As I pushed through the last bit of dense scrub fringing the river, a small stream came into view at my feet. My optimism evaporated. Packrafting this ‘river’ for 30km to the ocean was about as appealing as crawling it. I was so dismayed that I didn’t have the will to do the cry of despair.
A short while later, Tyrone pushed through the scrub and joined me in a pall of gloom. We contemplated the possibilities. The river rising overnight seemed unlikely, as two days of supposed rain didn’t seem to have had any significant effect, and anyway, the rain was forecast to fizzle out during the evening. Our options were a slow arse-drag down a grungy creek, or a walk back out—not an enticing prospect, either, as there was no car waiting for us on Norfolk Road, meaning we’d have to walk an additional 40km back to Corinna. Pete arrived and joined the gloom. We chewed over those two unappealing options some more, only deciding to delay our decision until the morning.
Originating high on the eastern slopes of Tasmania’s Norfolk Range, the Lagoon River flows about 37km through broad open Tarkine valleys and narrow rocky gorges, finally discharging its water across a remote beach on the island’s west coast. Our research—which was confined to studying online maps and
