Bobbing Along...

Canoeing in the Noosa Everglades

We signed up for a 2-day, 2-night camping/canoeing self-guided tour of the Noosa Everglades. What we thought would be a nice quiet trip made up of the two of us, a canoe, a tent and tuck bag ended up being a crazy kind of ‘I’m a Middle-Class Twenty-Something Get Me Out of Here!’ type scenario, complete with 19 people (of which Bro and I were two of only four people over the age of 24), no showers, snakes, remote campsite in the Australian Jungle, and meagre rations to distribute amongst us.

It also turned out that of everyone there, only 5 of us hadn’t brought alcohol, so we found ourselves sharing a canoe with a young German girl fresh out of Uni, most of our Eskys (cool boxes in Australian) full up with Goon (Ozzie alcohol, equivalent in quality and price to White Lightning), and off on a ‘team adventure’.

However, what started out as a potentially disastrous trip, ended up being a brilliant few days in the everglades. After an awesome speed boat ride through from Noosaville (passing, among other things, one of Richard Branson’s private Islands which would set you back a meagre $20,000 per night), we were deposited on a jetty and pushed off in canoes on our merry way to find our camp, without the precious maps we were promised (for our ‘self-guided tour’ remember). The lack of map resulted in 3 of the 8 canoes overshooting our camp and taking a 3 hour detour before arriving much to our concern and their annoyance.

Meanwhile the remaining 5 boats (of which we were one) arrived at the camp via canoe and promptly discovered that the “two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners” as promised was rather an ambitious statement. Our suggested breakfast was a mere bread and butter, and it became apparent rather early on that the bread had been forgotten. Lunch on day one consisted of 2 sausages each, and on day 2, consisted of a chewy bar and a pack of 2 minute noodles which “are a tasty snack when eaten dry!”. Finding ourselves without reception and in the middle of nowhere this was less than ideal, but luckily we managed to corner a tour guide who was passing on a nearbye trip and threaten him with 19 crap reviews, so we were promptly (about 6 hours later) delivered with some bread. Not the ‘bakery fresh’ we were promised, but enough for 3.5 slices per person. 1.75 slices of bread per day would have to make do for a breakfast set to fuel you for a day of hard canoeing and trekking!

Not all bad news though as everyone bonded over the lack of food, and it turns out we’d been thrown together with a rather lovely bunch of people, and they’d also already put up our tents and allocated them out. Luckily Bro and I were the only two with a tent to ourselves so were thankfully spared the dorm-style sleeping the others had to endure (and putting up with careless people leaving doors open to let mozzies/snakes/guanas/insert-scary-Australian-creatures in, like the others).

So we spent a marvellous two days in the company of lots of wonderful young (er?) people, swimming, canoeing, trekking, playing football/volleyball/cards and generally enjoying being in the wonderful outdoors. The water was incredible-a very dark orange/brown colour which had been stained by tannins from the tea trees, and resulted in a black appearance which when undisturbed made a perfect mirror! Very impressive to see on those rare moments when you could catch it without having a fellow canoeist mess it up. We were told it was safe to swim in (totally counter-intuitive to everything you’ve ever been told about Australia), and were told to ignore the Bull-shark warning signs which were up everywhere, so after a bit of coaxing, and some rather token safety strategies (making sure you were never the person furthest into the river and therefore ensuring you’re not eaten first), we happily went in the water.

On the middle day we canoed for an hour and a half up the river, where we tied up our boats then trekked to an incredible sand opening in the hillside which had views for miles and was like nothing else I’d ever seen! So weird to be walking through forest and suddenly it stops and you’re on a giant sand dune!

Overall it was a fab trip and after initially feeling a little old, I very quickly realised that I was in awe of these amazing young people who spoke incredible English and almost all had an incredibly mature and thoughtful approach to life. It reminded me why I love teaching sixth-formers.