Posted by If you’ve ever driven across the bridge in Buckland then you may have glanced down and seen what looks to be quite a significant river below you.
You may also have noticed further glimpses of the same river running parallel to the road as you continue on to Orford and thought to yourself “You know, I think that could be paddled“.
I certainly had.
So I looked it up on Google Earth and TheList and found it’s called the Prosser River.
I got to thinking and I got to looking and I was somewhat surprised to see there were no trip notes in either the old Paddle Tasmania book or on the Paddle Tasmania website about this river – surely someone has paddled it?
or maybe not … maybe I could be the first?
Today, Kim and I headed up to be equal firsts doing just that. I of course had plans to be first first and Kim second first, but that is mere details – I’d share the glory, just so long as it was understood I was expedition leader.
We however hit a small problem when we got to Buckland. On getting out of the car I immediately noticed that the deep, wide section of river lasted all of about 30 metres … then it disappeared into gorse bushes. I hadn’t noticed that at 80km/hr.
We slowly made our way to the end where we planned to leave the car and as we went along something became more and more obvious … this wasn’t a river, it was a stream … an overgrown steam at that.
By the time we got to the Orford end of the river it was very obvious that today wasn’t to be the first descent of the Prosser River, not by us anyway … that looked like way too much hard work. We just went to the Orford Cafe instead for a late breakfast.
Yesterday I had too much water, today too little … where’s my Goldilocks river?