Mid-winter trip to Kingston-On-Murray, 12-13 July 2025

Eight paddlers escaped the cold, dreary Adelaide weather for the warm, sunny days of the Riverland over the weekend.

Day 1 – Saturday

Based at the recently reopened Kingston-On-Murray caravan park, we launched on a gloriously sunny Saturday morning and made our way up the Murray river to the small creek which gives you access to all the backwater channels of the Chambers Creek and Loch Luna channels. We opted to explore the Chamber Creek side first, and so turned right at the end of the creek, into Chambers Creek, slowly meandering up the creek trying not to disturb all the pelicans, swans and other birdlife. Conditions were so good, and everyone was paddling so well, that we got ambitious and opted to go all the up the creek to Lake Bonny for lunch. After a quick lunch we launched again for the trip home, aided by a gentle tail wind. The recent floods seems to have cleaned out some of the channels, as we were able to return via some previously reeded-up routes. It was amazing to see the height of the flood levels marked on the trees, at least 5 meters above the waterline and well above the surrounding floodplain, the water must have spread out for kilometers. We reached the campsite again at 3:30 pm having traveled 19.1 km (by my GPS), just within the trip leaders promised distance of “oh, definitely less than 20km”.

After a relaxing hot shower at the caravan park, and some conversation around the campsite, some of us headed off the nearby Cobdogla Club for a hot meal and a cold drink. You can’t beat a country pub for a decent meal after a hard day’s work.

Day 2 – Sunday

Sunday morning the weather forecast had deteriorated a bit, with winds up the 15 knots forecast, so we cancelled our plans of paddling down the Murray, and headed back into the sheltered backwaters, this time heading north up Nockburra Creek towards Loch Luna. We made our way slowly up the creek until it opened in Loch Luna, the weather forecast was a bit optimistic as the Loch was a mass of waves and whitecaps, with winds of at least 20 knots. We immediately cancelled any thoughts of exploring the Loch, and turned tail back down the sheltered creeks, away from the wind. We slowly made our way back down a different creek towards the Murray, sticking close the bank to shelter from the wind. Luckily the wind had dropped a bit by the time we reached the camp so loading the kayaks on the cars wasn’t too much of a problem.