Rock’n’Roll Weekend – NSW See Kayak Club – 13-14 March 2026
The Rock’n’Roll event is the NSW Sea Kayak Club’s premier annual gathering for paddlers, showcasing their enthusiasm for kayaking and camaraderie. It features trips, training, talks, and information sessions, with a strong focus on socializing and community building. The event attracts paddlers from various Australian states,.
The weekend aims to present a wide variety of experiences and speakers so there is something for paddlers of all levels of experience.
On both mornings many of those with Paddle Australia leadership qualifications met for breakfast and decided amongst themselves which paddles and training sessions would be offered and who would lead each. There was no shortage of possibilities in the beautiful Eden area. Paddles included benign river trips, short and long sea trips, rock gardening, rescue training, rolling and more. ACC leaders led some of the sea trips and supervised rolling sessions.
The paddles and training sessions were conducted each morning. Afternoons were taken up with a wide variety of speakers and workshops. These included sessions on such topics as navigation, boat repair, skill development (one of which was taken by ACC’s Hugh Stewart), boat design, how to polish kayaks, great paddling destinations in SA (great promotion from ACC’s Phil Dodridge) and many others. Often sessions were held concurrently, so we couldn’t see all we wished.
There were also talks given by a number of people who had undertaken exceptional paddles, including Richard Barnes, who paddled from Australia to New Zealand and Sandy Robson, who paddled from Germany to Australia.
Saturday evening was the Rock’n’Roll dinner, with Paul Caffyn as a fascinating guest speaker. Paul had paddled the coast of Alaska, amongst other things. The diners were also entertained by “The Pogies”; which was a ‘competition’ of short videos made by paddlers. (Some of our ACC videos would have been stiff competition!)
Overall, it was a very good weekend, but it was a long drive for a two-day experience. Most of the ACC members who attended agreed that, to make it worthwhile in future, we would arrange some ‘before’ and/or ‘after’ paddles to justify the travel.
Everyone arrived at the campsite on Friday, for a relaxed setup and chat around the fire. On-the-water time was set for 9:30 am on Saturday, but by 9am everyone was all set up and ready to go, so we set off up the Murray towards Lock 4, with a nice tailwind to help us along. Bernie phoned the lockmaster just before we got there, so there was no delay once we arrived. After everyone entered the lock, the gate closed behind us and we chatted to the lockmaster as the waters lifted us up, and the upstream gates opened.
Eventually we reached the Eckerts Creek Wide Waters, where the creek opened up into a nice, wide oxbow lake. We paddle up into a stiff headwind, which gradually turned into a welcome tailwind as we moved around the curve of the lake. After we reached the end of the lake, we continued down the creek until we reached Sawmill Creek, which would take us back to the Murray and our campsite.
Sunday morning we packed up the camp first, before heading downstream to do a loop in the opposite direction. The first obstacle was the rocky weir just below the campsite. There was a good flow of water over the rocks, and despite some trepidation, everyone managed to paddle over the weir and navigate the turbulent water below it without and capsizes.
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”.
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.
Our first day paddling from Fortescue Bay was out to Cape Hauy. There, we admired the dolerite columns called the Totem Pole and the Candle Stick. We had protection from the southerly wind as we skirted along the rocky cliffs and enjoyed the swell crashing in and the rebound waves. There was a sea eagle spotted perched on the cliff and it didn’t seem worried by our proximity. Within the protected area beside the Totem Pole and Candle Stick there were lots of seals that swam around our kayaks. Venturing further out on the exposed side of Cape Hauy the wind was quite strong and had generated waves which broke over the bow of kayaks almost to the cockpit. The group split; with some paddling around the outer islands, called The Lanterns, while others stayed on the sheltered side and paddled the northern side of these islands.
This day’s paddle was to the north from Fortescue Bay past the Devils Kitchen, Tasman Arch and the Blow Hole then into Pirates Bay finishing at the boat ramp. Because this was a one way paddle we organised a car shuttle to have a few cars at the landing spot.
We set up tents at the caravan park Monday evening. The fun started the next day with the traditional swim down the moving water, getting used to white water and practicing our throw-bag techniques. It became apparent that some of us indeed needed practice; others were spot-on with their throws.
The next day saw us resuming play around the pumpkins; interrupted by a lightning storm. After lunch we packed boats onto the cars and took them to a launch point just below the dam. We paddled down the river, stopping to play on small waves and to harvest ripe blackberries.
That afternoon we had a short paddle down Katarapto Creek to check out the regulator at the bottom of The Splash, which, to our alarm, was closed. This would mean a nasty portage in the coming days. We all retreated back to the campsite to discuss options around the campfire with a glass of wine.
After a much dragging of kayaks over, under and around logs, we eventually got to clear water where the creek widened out into a horseshoe lake, which abounded with pelicans and other birds.
Sunday morning we headed off in the other direction, down Katarapko creek. Everyone had fun running the short white-water section over the weir, and we let the current take us down to the massive regulator at the end of The Splash. This is normally open to paddle through, but the Parks Board had closed it off to create an artificial flooding event upstream. This meant a strenuous portage over the weir, luckily everyone was still fresh and the kayaks were unladen. The regulators are good for the river, but I wish they would consider the kayakers and give us some good access points.
