Day fifteen - Into the suburbs

Day 15

The water was still quite clean and the banks attractive. A platypus appeared downstream f Warrandyte. This was the case pretty much to Templestowe but after that the river started to get dirty.

At 9:45am we pulled out and headed back to Warrandyte to meet some media. Channel 7 and ABC TV were there, two doco makers and the students from RMIT with their camera. That all seemed to go well and the coverage on the news that night was fine.

Interestingly both channels put me against Tim Holding, the minister who insists that the pipeline is good for the river because of the shared savings. It beats me how he thinks he can create water. From all of my analysis, all of my investigations and discussions I can see no savings, just paper shuffling and spin. There is no magic way to create water for the river. It would be nice if someone could get him to justify his statements one day, rather than just repeating them.

Even with 3˝ hours out for the media I made 42.8km for the day, finishing at Dights Falls. My speed was helped when I caught up with a kayak club training. They took off 200m ahead of me and their boats weigh about 8kg and mine is 80kg but I got through about half the field. It was a lot of fun and just the sort of thing to get the kilometres down quickly.

Just a quick sprint into the city to go.