An Australian Advencha!

Well it all started with a phone call... "do you want to work a contract in Australia canoeing on the Drysdale River?" "Sure...when?" "In 2 weeks..." So there I was boarding a plane (well multiple planes) to Broome Western Australia (north west tip). Upon arriving I was then asked to stay with the expedition and continue to hike with them for another 3 weeks... reluctantly i said yes..

Before we did anything else there was one thing we had to take care of first - scare the students at the croc park - check out these bad boys. As Willy my southern co instructor would have said " they will whoop your asss". Luckily these crocs are saltwater crocs (in which we were only in "potentially" in their area for only 4 days) We were mainly in Freshwater croc territory - in which we saw them everyday but they are pretty docile. Apart from one which chased after some students and rammed their boat...

So once we got our gear and food sorted we headed our way up to the Drysdale Station (8hour drive on a dirt road) putting on the river with 10 canoes, 39 days worth of food, 19 people, 220km to travel.

The river itself is a mix of class 1 - 5, with some very interesting rapids that look like they disappear into the trees (very hard to scout!). We ran some rapids...

We found various ways to "line" some of the rapids...

And there were some which we just had to portage around...

Everyday seemed like a new discovery, there was always something new that would be amazing. The insects and animals, the river itself, the amazing plant life...

We came across this amazing bat colony, we watched these eagles attacking the bats and flying off with them - it reminded me of the wizard of oz...

We did some days hikes to explore some of the creeks and rockart near the river - there is so much rock art in this area - some the oldest in the world! But unfortunately I am not allowed to publish these photos.

We were camping mainly on slick rock every night, some of the best camping spots I have seen. Its was super hot at the start of the trip as the rock would never cool down it would hold the heat of the 35 degree days well. But then we got a lot of rain which cooled it off. Sleeping under mosquitoe nets and the stars was a pretty special ways to end a great day

We had to deal with many medical issues - it was like we were running a clinic. Infections were the biggest of our concern, we didnt know it at the time but somehow a staph bacteria got into the group and several people kept coming up with boils. We had 5 evacuations (one student of which got evacuated 3 times)...

We caught the end of the wet season, which bought thunder and lightning storms in on a daily basis...but half way through the canoeing section the dry season kicked in and we no longer got any significant rain.

The classroom...

So after 39 days canoeing down the river, we met up with a NOLS truck and they picked up our canoes, gave us some more food and sent us on our way to hike back up the river for 26 days.

Unfortunately for us we still were not aware of this highly contagious bacteria amongst our group. Now that were hiking and getting more sweaty and dirty the bacteria had a field day...and I was one of the victims.

In total we had 7 people evacuated because of this infection, some peoples bodies could handle it some didnt...So after 5 days of hiking I had some nasty boils on both my legs, I jumped on a helicopter, then a 4 seater plane to fly us back to Broome.

I am currently still in Broome, hanging out waiting to be healed. I have been on 5 different antibiotics one of which was an iv. The 5th one seems like its doing the job nicely, at this stage I will be hangin out until the end of the week and then flying back to Vancouver to join in on the adventures with Shaun, Hills and my sis...so until then