Goolang Easter weekend

Facebook was useful. (Although I can see it becoming more useful with living on the other side of the world.) You would think that Brisbane would have very few river , even less paddlers and no whitewater clubs. Well that is where you would be wrong. Although it is not exactly new zealand there is some paddling around and as it turns out two whitewater clubs, both related to universitys.
So thanks to playak and facebook I met some guys from a bush walking club at Griffith University (GRUBS). And it just so happend that they where planning to do some paddling at goolang creek over the easter weekend. Not having much else to do and pretty excited to get into a boat again it decided that I should give it a go. Dee, Lauran and myself piled into Laura’s car along with piles of stuff and headed down with the easter traffic to goolang.
I didn’t expect much from the goolang and didn’t get much. Goolang creek is the outflow of a small hydro sceme, so it constantly flows. Albiet with not that much water. The Common Wealth Games slalom course was built on the river so there are a few man made drops providing some action and a few small shallow play features. The biggest rapid on the section is a shallow grade 3 that provides much entertainment and injuries thanks to the number of novice paddlers around. Laura and Dee enjoyed the river. I was a great river for Dee as it was her first time in a kayak on a river.
Sean, one of te guys from GRUBS, hooked me up with some other local paddlers who were planning on during on off the other sections, The Little Murry and Mynboidia. I can’t say I was anything other than super impressed. The put in reminded me of the midlands in Natal and the river in general was a lot like the upper sabie, with some really nice drops, slides and rapids. It was a little low but still a lot more fun that I was expecting. Another great part of the river was the scenery, it flows though some amazing rain forest and there is loads of birds and reptile life along the river. It was also awesome to paddle with a buch of crappy gear (i looked like a massive gumby) and a bunch of new people on new unknown river.
We all paddled the goolang again on Sunday. This time Laura got tennis court (the grade 3) wrong and lost some skin and Dee flipped in a shallow rapid and lost part of her tooth. Apart from that we all had a pretty good time.
Another highlight of the trips was cooking snags (which are sausages) over a fire with a stick. The slags jokes just never got old….