Arthurs Lake Aquagaine

Monday, 26 February 2024

After another one night turnaround almost the whole family packed and set off for an aquagaine adventure at Arthurs Lake. Unfortunately Zali had covid so we had to leave her at home despite her being the keenest of all of us to participate - in fact it had been her dream rogaine format so very disappointing for her, but she had to focus on recovering in time for her Taylor Swift concert in Sydney on Monday night.

The event centre was at a place called Jonah Bay Campground beside Arthurs Lake - a huge lake with heaps of little islands. It was a really lovely campground with lots of campsites by the water all with brand new facilities including toilets and even showers.  

We arrived late in the afternoon on the beautiful Saturday afternoon, so we just had enough time to test out our kayaks that we borrowed from the Taroona Scouts:

Jett was in a team of 3 and they were planning to use our two paddle boards, despite none of them actually having any paddle boarding skills,.  Thankfully they also tested their equipment and pretty quickly realised that if they wanted to make any progress they'd need to have one of them use Zali's no-longer-needed kayak to tow the others along (and also keeping them from blowing to the other end of the lake).  This was their very dodgy setup (thankfully we all had to have life jackets and the organiser had a rescue boat):

That night we had a campfire and watched the moon rise over the lake.  

Sunrise the next morning was also spectacular:

We got our maps at 8am and spent some time planning our route - we definitely could have done a better job of this but we were happy enough by the time we set off at 10am with 4 hours to visit as many checkpoints as we could.

Jett and his team decided (wisely) to do the majority of the travel by land - which was possible as the terrain was generally hospitable. We decided to do most of the travel by water, with a few jogging stretches out and back to checkpoints.  We ended up finishing about midfield - a better route could have got us into the top third or quarter, but we were always going to be behind the competent people in the double kayaks who moved along at a fast clip. I think we paddled really well overall and it was super fun regardless. A really big platypus swam along beside us for a few moments which was really cool.

All in all it was a great fun adventure to a place we'd never otherwise even know about - we're so lucky to have these experiences!

UPDATE: I just took a screen shot of some drone footage of Jett and his team setting out across the lake - not much paddling going on from the back two. (oh the shame of being beaten by them):