November 6 Marlo - mouth of the Snowy River

We have been exploring the mighty Snowy River “where the gorges deep and black ...

resound to the thunder of their tread” (horses not ours! thanks Banjo but more of that later), and its extensive estuary. First on its western aspect at Corringle where we walked the waters edge until we could find no footholds and could go no further. In the photo above Marlo is nestled across the water. 

A little way inland we passed its huge drainage lake, Lake Wat Wat (Corringle) into which Ewing Morass, a short way along the coast to the west, drains. The whole of the coastal area down here seems to be swamps and lakes where it isn’t sand dunes and rocky promontories. But I wanted to tell you about exploring closer to the mouth of the Snowy to the east. 

We’d just walked onto the beach from a track winding through the rainforest. 

The so -called track was very narrow. 

Someone had left the Skelton of a beach cubby made from logs washed down the river. 

Must have been Mermaids washing day!

Some days later we headed to Marlo to walk part of the 10km estuary walk. I loved this walk because most of it was along the very edge of the water. When I say the very edge I mean no more than half to one metre sand strip on a rising tide! Yikes - we had to retrace our steps later on that rising tide. But hey it’s only water. 

Huge logs lined the shore of the river 

Pied oyster catchers



We walked as far as that next point but then it was pretty much all water

The mouth of the river. 

Silence except for lapping water and the occasional call of the Pied Oyster Catchers and terns and not far off the thunderous roar of the sea on Ninety Mile Beach beating back on the Snowy as it forced its wedge of salty water upstream on the tide. Here the river is held back somewhat by large sand dunes but there’s no stemming the tides. Bass and grayling depend on this mix of salty and fresh water to reproduce. Ah the cleverly wrought balance of nature!

You could see the action of the tide in whirls of foam. 

We were heading to get around that rocky headland with hopes that there would be a little  dry strip 
Time and tide convinced us to turn back eventually and we retraced our steps westward until it almost became a matter of taking a swim. Seriously we were wading in water, climbing through tree trunks and roots, and through reeds. Rather an adventure at times. A solitary fisherman (actually turned out to be two) looked at us mouth agape as we squelched through a reedy patch. He’d watched our progress through the tangled shore and said ‘that was a bit of an adventure’ - probably thought we were mad. With another rocky promontory looming ahead we fortunately found some steps up off the beach and back into the rainforest that clings precariously to the coast. 

This patch of rainforest is the southern part of a littoral rainforest that hems the east coast of Australia right up to Cape York. This southern patch is critically endangered; for heavens sake can we please hang on to the vestiges of our precious flora! From there it was only about 200m to the beast - and food!

It had been a magical few hours and were going back there again in a few days to tackle the walk from French’s Narrows.