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“Portage” is an indispensable word in the river rafters’ lexicon. Originally French, its dictionary translation is “the carrying of boats or goods between two navigable waters”. I had reason to reflect upon the innocuousness of both the word itself and the scenario it describes, as they seemed a far cry from the activity I was now engaged in: scrambling about on a slippery rock, trying to coax a heavily loaded rubber raft between two boulders – a gap too narrow for its girth and under constant assault from thousands of gallons of white-water. River guides the world over have a standing joke about this exact situation: “Portage – from the French, meaning bloody hard work in a precarious situation”. Such is the challenge of expedition rafting and the truth is, I was loving every minute of it. I glanced over at Brendan, at twenty-one the younger of our two river guides, and his grin confirmed that he too was having a ball, despite appearing in imminent danger of being swept off his feet and into the torrent. “Mate”, he yelled over the roar of the rapids, “Like I keep telling ‘em...........this is not a holiday!”

Tasmania’s Franklin River is a world renowned rafting destination, both because of the beauty and remoteness of the country through which it flows and because of events in 1983, when thousands of Australians took to the streets to save it from being dammed. In all, 1,272 people were arrested for defying the Tasmanian government in what remains the largest act of civil disobedience in Australia’s history. A measure of respect was clearly in order as I prepared to spend the next eleven days rafting the Franklin, through the heart of the wilderness that was so hard fought for and won.

Our group of ten (eight clients plus two guides) mustered over an early breakfast in Hobart, before heading out on the Lyell Highway to Collingwood Bridge, two-and-a-half hours northwest of the Tasmanian capital. Here we packed our gear and supplies into barrels and “dry bags” and lashed these to aluminium frames which were then secured in the two rafts. Our trip leader Shaun briefed us on how to handle a difficult portage or gnarly set of rapids and talked us through ways of getting back into a raft you’ve just fallen out of. A light drizzle was beginning to close in as we donned helmets and life-jackets and pushed off into the gentle currents of the Collingwood River, which would carry us on down to the Franklin.

Our first afternoon was spent getting acquainted with our raft buddies and pressing Shaun and Brendan for stories about Franklin expeditions from days gone by. For Shaun – at thirty-one, a veteran of thirty-five Franklin trips – the river presents a new challenge each and every time. “Some of the portages we’ll do tomorrow, I’ve rafted straight through with the boulders under six feet of water. Other times the river is so low we’ve had to do a high portage – unload the gear, deflate the rafts and carry the lot over a track through the forest. It once took six hours to get the rafts back onto the river barely two hundred yards downstream”. There have been accidents and even fatalities on the Franklin, but most of these involved kayakers being overly ambitious or plain unlucky while running the rapids.

Thanks to the light but steady rain, the river level was high enough to allow us to glide over small rocks and portage around the bigger ones on the way to our first night’s campsite. Camping conditions turned out to be typical of those for the entire trip: the ravine drops steeply to the river and there is not much level ground to work with, so rock overhangs make ideal shelters. On those occasions when we did camp in the forest, weatherproofing consisted of a couple of tarpaulins strung between trees, but on clear nights we just stretched out in our sleeping bags beneath a ceiling of stars.

Each morning would begin just past sunrise, with Brendan coaxing the rest of us from our cocoons with the aroma of the day’s first pot of coffee. By Day Three the weather had cleared beautifully, sunglasses and sunscreen replaced fleece jackets and waterproofs, and conditions were ideal for the long day-hike to the top of Frenchman’s Cap. At 4,500 feet, the summit is over half a vertical mile above the Franklin – an ideal spot from which to take in the unspoilt beauty of the country we had been travelling through, its mountains, forests, high-country lakes and tarns.

The next few days saw both raft crews functioning superbly, responding as one to commands (“left turn”, “jump right”, “forward hard”), as we bounced off logs and boulders through rapids which bore such reassuring names as The Cauldron, The Churn, Nasty Notch and Thunderush. Miraculously, it was not until we struck the benignly named Newlands Cascades that our only real drama occurred. Shaun and his crew had managed to wrap their raft around a boulder and there it stayed for twenty minutes, held in place by the fast-flowing white-water. Having hung gamely on for a minute or two, Simon, a tax auditor from Brisbane, was dragged away for a bumpy solo ride to the bottom of the cascades. He came up bruised but smiling, and it was only later that it occurred to any of us that among the whole group, only Simon and Arthur – both tax auditors – had come unstuck in the rapids. Lovely fellas both, but we could hardly resist suggesting that perhaps karma had finally caught up with them.

Over the last day or so, the river widened out and rapids were left behind as we eased into a leisurely paddling rhythm. Twice I caught sight of platypus crossing the river – one of them so close I could easily have dived out of the raft right on top of it, Steve Irwin-style. Through the afternoons the silences grew longer and more comfortable, and as we slipped along under a blazing blue sky, the quiet was broken only occasionally by Shaun enquiring, “How’s the serenity?” Each time I had to admit it was well above par.

Our last night was spent camped at a jetty on the Gordon River, near its confluence with the Franklin. The final leg to Strahan would take us through Macquarie Harbour – a waterway too broad and windswept to negotiate by raft – so we were to be collected by yacht early next morning. As we prepared what would be our last riverside meal, Shaun hauled two dozen cans of beer, stashed weeks earlier, from the cold river bottom and we drank a toast to our achievements of the last ten days. It turns out Brendan had it exactly right: a Franklin expedition is not a holiday; it is, however, an unforgettable experience of life on a river that, thanks to those who fought to save it, still offers one of the last great wilderness journeys on earth.

Note: The October 2006 edition of National Geographic Traveler magazine listed rafting the Franklin River among its “Top 50 Tours of a Lifetime”.

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