Tully River Rafting

Wow, that was fun. Today we went white water rafting in the Tully River. I've been rafting once in Jasper when we were young, but this was something else. First off we had to meet the bus in town at 6:40am. The bus took us on a 2 hour journey to the town of Tully. It was a sleepy ride at this hour and it was raining the whole time. Luckily we were going white water rafting.

Once we made it to the river it didn't take long to get in. A little safety and rafting lesson started it all off. Normally the rafting groups can be as big as 20 boats. If you pay an extra 30 bucks you get to go on the extreme package, which guarantees you are part of a small group of no more than 4 boats. Not a lot of people were up for rafting today so we were part of a group of only 4 boats anyways. Bonus!

This was our crew. Two from Italy, two from around Sydney, the guide and his brother. This picture was taken about 3/4 of the way through. After dropping off about a 2m drop we all jumped in the water and swam to this little beach where they were taking pictures. When we started at the top of the river we went through a little rapid what we all thought was kinda fun. Then in the pool on the other side he told us that was a 2. The scale of rapids go from 0-6. Where 0 is a ripple and 6 is death (as he put it). So a two was pretty mild. Then he pointed ahead and said, "That's a four". It was way more fun.

Most of the river was made up of 3's and 4's. There was one closer to the end that I think he said was a five. After 2 hours of rowing we pulled over to the bank and walked up for a barbeque. We were all craving something to eat. In this first half of rowing he made us go down a mild rapid just in our life jackets. That was almost as much fun as the boat. This first half was about 4km.

The second half was about 12km, and he said we have a lot more fun on the second half because they let loose a bit more. I thought this meant it was going to be milder rapids, not the case. There were a few really wild rides and a few places that our guide purposely dumped us. Then we got to a stop where there was a little cliff and everybody climbed up an jumped down into a pool. I'm not a big cliff jumper so it felt like it was a mile, it wasn't.

Then we got to a few sets of rapids that rocked our socks off. We went through one place where it was a couple of really intense rapids in a row. We hit a hole pretty quick and lost 3 people from our boat. It seemed pretty intense when our guide told us to rescue people. One guy got pulled back in quickly, and another woman got rolled around in a wave for a little bit before hitting the boat and getting pulled back in. The third guy got pulled away from the boat and was held under water for a few seconds, but it seemed like minute. Then he some how ended up back by the boat and we got him in. The guide was asking us to act quickly because we were heading right into another intense section.

This was a pretty fun picture. At the end of the trip we were told not to jump into the water because it has crocs. There were being serious also, but we didn't see any. We recommend this trip to everybody, it was pricy but well worth it.

Nick