Six days into a rafting trip down the Franklin River in Tasmania's southwest, you'd think getting wet wouldn't worry me. True, I've fallen off the raft, fallen into the raft, been drenched and dunked and dipped so many times I never feel completely dry. But I haven't been wet like this. Maybe the siren-like chattering of the pure waters distracts us - in any case, we're careless on this rapid, too slow and uncoordinated in our approach, and too late to change course when we realize our error. The current of a mighty river doesn't indulge mistakes, which is why I find myself gripping onto the raft as it goes over the rapid sideways and comes to rest at a curious angle on a log. As cold water pours over my shoulders into the boat, I keep saying robotically to my companions, "I'm concerned, I'm deeply concerned."
A rafting trip down the length of one of Australia's last, and greatest, wild rivers seemed a natural progression from a 10-day bushwalk around Tasmania's tough south coast last year. There I'd trudged for hours through thigh-deep mud, learned to scoff at leeches and icy, slanting rain, come to love instant mashed potato, and fallen hard for the island's wild beauty. If you didn't even have to shoulder a backpack, how difficult could sitting in a raft be? "Don't worry about the paddling skills," the tour company's owner had said after quizzing me and my companion for details of our outdoor experience. "It's all about endurance." Weeks later, we arrive at a tiny Hobart hotel room scattered with life jackets and safety helmets to meet our fellow rafters. Eight men look up to study us intently as we walk in. Several of them look decidedly unfit, and I look around for the natural leader of the group, the tough veteran of the voyage we're about to begin. "Hi, we're your guides," says a boyish young man from the floor, where he's kneeling on a bulging bright blue bag, squashing it into as small a shape as possible. He nods cheerfully toward an even younger man, who looks like he's just woken after a big night.
The bags Pat hands around turn out to be as much cargo as we're going to be allowed to take. About twice the size of our sleeping bags, they will carry a meager array of clothes and, if we're lucky, keep them dry. After putting in two pairs of thick socks - one for bed, one for around camp - I add the pair I'll wear during the day, the pair that will stay wet, and keep my feet wet, for the entire trip. With no room for luxuries like a hairbrush, I find space to stash away some chocolate. When we meet at the bus for the drive to the tributary where we'll inflate our two rafts, our companions' bags look just as lumpy as mine. They're a group of six friends in their 40s, four businessmen from New South Wales and two Germans, one of them the owner of a hemp shop who spends the first few afternoons in camp lying motionless in his sleeping bag. The Germans have never been to Tasmania before; most of us have never been in a raft before. There's some uncertain laughter about our fitness levels. We decide to calm our nerves with egg-and-bacon rolls at the last shop on our five-hour drive west through hop fields and farming towns.
By the time we push our rafts cautiously into the Collingwood River a few hours later, any fantasy of an easy ride is long gone. A lurid sign warning of the risks of rafting had confronted us as the bus pulled off the Lyell Highway, and our outfits have added to the feeling of uneasy excitement. We clip bright life jackets over a motley combination of bathers, thermal pants and tops, shirts, shorts and wetsuits, before donning helmets, thick socks, gloves and sneakers. We should expect, says Pat, an earnest, highly capable 21-year-old who's on his first trip as tour leader, to get very hot and very wet, often at the same time. And he's right, for though the sun beats down as we set off, bags and barrels of food lashed to the rafts, within a hour it's drizzling as we head toward the confluence with the Franklin.
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