::: TASMANIAN HERITAGE
Shooting
the Franklin: II
1959, third attempt Franklin River
Same team, but lighter canoe loads, food air drops arranged, and a transceiver with morse key, headphone and aerial (picked up at army disposals). Crocker and Newland were to walk into Fincham Hut, while Dean and Hawkins set out on the first leg.
Southern Tasmanian Aero Club cartoon depicting the air drops
“Looking back,” says Dean, with remarkable aplomb,“I am forced to conclude that we were either accident prone, incompetent, or both. We had not advanced very far before we were in serious trouble again.”
This time it was an encounter with a huge log jutting out from the bank midstream. The canoe capsized, tuned upside down and was almost totally submerged.
“We carried with us a small block and tackle for such emergencies. This had been carefully stowed away inside the aft hatch, the one now furthest away from the bank.
In order to reach the hatch and undo the spring-loaded cover I had to swim underneath the canoe and wrestle with the fastening to get the cover off, and after several submersions, finally succeeded. We tied one rope to a tree, and the other to the bow, and lifted the canoe sufficiently for us to manhandle it over the log. What we pulled ashore could be described as nothing but a wreck.”
We were powerless. All we could do was to keep the bow pointing upstreams we raced madly down river, lurching over waterfalls in sickening swoops …
But it was eventually repaired and they moved on. Hawkins slipped into the water again at Descension Gorge “which, after two disasters, we had come to dread”.
They made it this time but now were committed to going down the gorge — backwards.
John Hawkins later wrote:
“In the next few minutes we lived a lifetime...We began a teterrifying
race backwards down the rushing rapids of the gorge. We were powerless. All
we could do was to keep the bow pointing upstreams we raced madly down river,
lurching over waterfalls in sickening swoops … I was in the stern and remember
seeing Dean rise several feet above me as we lunged over each fall, the canoe
standing almost vertically, as I was engulfed in icy waves … It was a
miracle that we weren’t smashed at the foot of one of the falls.”
Dean takes up the story again: “Balancing a canoe full of water is about as difficult as riding a log … But amazingly we did make it into calmer water just above the Irenabyss. We cautiously turned and paddled towards some rocks and carefully stepped ashore. Here we engaged in some back slapping, congratulating each other on having survived.
“Having read this far it must seem that we were preoccupied with coping with one disaster after another, but this is not the whole story. I am pleased to say that we were able to rise above the trauma of these events and from time to time enjoy the surroundings.”
Part II Other adventures
1961, Gordon River The adventures and misadventures of taming the mighty Franklin continued, but in due course the four bearded, suntanned, wild-looking men in battered red and yellow canoes made it to Macquarie Harbour and celebrated in Strahan “with the biggest meal in weeks”. Hawkins and Dean revisited the lower half of the river several times. In 1961 they turned their attention to the Gordon, aiming to explore the upper section from the Gordon Bend to the Serpentine junction.
It was an exceptionally dry year and the two men were able to go through the Gordon’s three Splits (three narrow gorges created by breaks in a chain of hills) rather than carrying everything over the top.
While it was not without its anxious moments and some treacherous portages, Dean goes on to describe unusual happenings, rather than aquatic trials. When a small freshwater crayfish crawled up onto a rock ledge into the shallow water where they had thrown some scraps, it was quickly speared with a fork and dropped into an already boiling billy. Unfortunately, cancelling a food air drop, then being delayed by bad weather, reduced rations to rolled oats porridge on the last day — which tipped over during cooking, spilling the whole lot on the sand (“I could have cried!” Dean adds). They had encounters with cormorants, with a lamprey, saw eels, inexplicably dead high in a tree, watched bushfire smoke plume into the sky.
It proved, Dean tells, “a most enjoyable adventure...The Gordon was a river of extremes, but the good times outweighed the bad.”