My Rapid Reactions

It began with a random purchase from Kmart. On sale, four man raft. My friend Phillip saw this bargain while shopping for something else frivolous—as he always had more money than sense. So naturally, he walked out with a raft he did not need. He realised he would have to create a need to justify the purchase. At this stage, none of us really did much aside from drink, play video games and be evil pricks to one another. Phillip worked at Woolworths as did my other friend, Randy. They valued their positions about as much as anti-vaccination groups value logic and reason. But as there weren’t many other places to gain employment in town, they courageously endured. I was supposed to be attending college but I discovered that if I didn’t, I was able to get inebriated as often as I pleased and sleep in until early afternoon. One night, drinking as we usually would on any other day of the week, we concluded that given our complete lack of experience and the inherent danger of rafting a Tasmanian river: we should go rafting. Randy and Phillip had already christened the raft by this stage with another friend of mine to test the raft’s buoyancy capabilities which ended in a wild, middle-of-the-night adventure. They found themselves lost in the dark, fearing for their lives. Thankfully, they survived and hence decided that it was possibly wiser to embark early morning and to spend at least ten minutes planning the trip beforehand.

So we went down to a farm located beside the river just outside of an old mining town called Railton (a sad story all to itself) that Phillip ’s friend owned. Our intention: go down the night before, get an early night and set off at day break. Needless to say, the events of the evening prior to the trip went slightly differently from the intentions. We ended up drinking some of the liquor stockpiles we had for the next day. Thankfully we had brought much more than we needed so this was not a problem. I recall throwing oil onto the fire to prove that oil doesn’t burn (yes, I used to be an idiot) and the others singing an altered version of ‘Joyride’ by ‘Roxette’. They had me convinced the lyrics were actually ‘…come for a joyride. A motherfuckin’ joyride…’ It wasn’t until several years later that I realised there was no such version.

At the crack of dawn, we were still sleeping. It wasn’t until mid-morning that we awoke, somewhat less sharp than we had intended, and began to inflate the vessel. It was a gruelling process none of us were in the mood to participate in and little was said. We were definitely very accustomed to the state of mind we were all in but forcing ourselves into physical labour was still, to put it bluntly: a bitch. After a considerable amount of time delegating tasks about the fellowship, we loaded Phillip ’s black duffle bag with what remained of the two cartons of premix and a ‘puncture repair kit’ we had made, consisting of high-vis gaffer tape and a foot-operated air mattress pump. We then sealed the mobile phones in double zip-lock bags, stacked the four oars that came with the raft and pushed off. After some hung-over squabbling over who had to push in the shallows and a couple of anticlimactic attempts at riding rapids (all ending in becoming embanked on rocks), we were on our way. As the summer positioned itself higher above the horizon, we realised that sunscreen may well have been a wise investment.

Murphy’s Law states: ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong’. I think at this early stage of our lives, we had heard this expression but had little reality to base it in. So far our lives had consisted of McDonalds’ drive-ins, space-themed video games and the sweet nectar of alcohol. This was arguably the first time our survival instincts outside of the family nest were tested. While we believed we were quite clever, we had no idea what we were doing. Much like a mechanic trying to carve an ice sculpture, we tried to adapt years of joystick twiddling to the task at hand. The river was thankfully as empty as the Devonport mall on any given day. It was getting well into summer which meant it was shallower than we expected. This worked out well in that we likely would have died had we went in winter. The downside was that the shallow depth meant scraping on a lot of rocks. Eventually, we had scraped over one too many and our raft started deflating slowly. By now, we were approaching the threshold of intoxication again. We realised shortly after departure that sitting in a raft could only be made more exciting with alcohol and had begun drinking nearly as soon as we begun floating. This rendered our problem solving abilities dulled. So our solution to the puncture issue was to have one of us sitting in the back continuously hand pumping the foot pump from the ‘repair kit’. Then, dumb luck kicked in. Phillip had been paddling about to cool off and as he majestically re-entered the craft like a mermaid in the Caribbean, he felt the air gushing from the leak tickling his sun-kissed skin. We pulled over and located the hole and to everyone’s amazement, the tape actually repaired the leak and we were on our way.

Shortly after this mishap, we were confronted with our first set of intense rapids. Their sound was unexpectedly loud and bothering, like walking into ‘The Warehouse’: the only nightclub in town. Of course, we considered ourselves to be more than equipped to handle such an obstacle and carried on through with little to no thought at all about what angle to approach it on. It was at this point that one of us—I can't remember who—dropped one of the paddles and it disappeared beneath the water (even though it was designed to float) out of site. Phillip , considered by the three of us to be the most intelligent, concocted a brilliant way to locate our old oar—even though with the spare, we currently had enough. He decided that Randy and I would stand down river while he dropped the spare into the water. When it reached his position, one of us would catch it: revealing the path our estranged oar must have taken and leading us to where it was concealed. Fool proof. One thing led to another and inevitably, we were down to only two oars. Now one of us got to sip on a can while the other two slaved against the forces of nature.

The day had already felt like two or three in comparison with our real-world everyday lives. We would have probably still been in bed at this point; it was still in the AM. It was around this time, after a cycle of easy sailing to navigating traitorous white-water, that we came upon a dead fish floating about purposelessly. Randy was not adverse to a bit of tom-foolery and saw this as an opportunity for a good story. We planned carefully and acted out a scene in which he made it appear as though he was pulling a living, thrashing fish from the water with his bare hands. I am pleased to say it looked authentic though alas, the video is no longer with us; lost somewhere amongst other countless clips from a generation in which camera –phones were still a novelty. A day or two after the event, Randy broke out in a rash which we all assumed was contracted from the fish. In hindsight, it was oddly suspicious how it was just floating about without any signs of a struggle.

We soldiered on through with our two oars. It is extraordinary how exhausting it is labouring against a river in the sun, especially whilst intoxicated. But being as young and relatively fit as we were (time had yet to take its toll on our bodies given our unhealthy lifestyles), we were unstoppable. We came across a family on the river with a similar raft just having a bit of R&R at a bend. They were, in true Tasmanian style, quite friendly with us and undoubtedly bored out of their minds at home prior to arriving. We exchanged a few words as we drifted effortlessly past. Somewhere in this dialogue, it came up we were an oar down and to our delight, they offered to give us one of theirs. It worked out great and we started making better time, that is until we got bored and decided to play baseball (or for nationalism's sake, cricket) with the new oar. Randy bowled a stone and when Phillip swung at it, it was a direct hit. Great testament to Phillip ’s sporting prowess, not so much to the paddles integrity as it completely shattered. This was a devastating blow but thankfully, we were all relatively familiar with ‘Macgyver’ and shoved a lump of wood about the same dimensions as the paddle into the handle. It was heavier but it provided some acceleration.

It was now afternoon and our bodies were fatiguing rapid-ly (pun intended). The river had been only a fraction of its normal capability for chaos but still proved challenging for a band of under-prepared street youths. But, none-the-less, we were eager to demonstrate our might over nature as our ancestors had assumedly done before us. Now a threat greater than the tenacity of the river loomed over us: intoxication. Randy and Phillip decided to escape the relentlessness of the sun and swim out from the raft for a while, whilst I had the duty of maintaining the vessel. I was a poor choice in crew to handle the responsibility because not only did I have no bloody idea what being a ‘crew’ entailed, but within the space of two minutes, I had forgotten this was my task and was lying down: limbs sprawled out in the raft like a cowhide rug. Little did I know, the raft itself was picking up pace into some white-water and the other two were behind me, desperately trying to catch up. Randy caught the back first. Phillip would have made it with heaps of time before the craft launched itself down the river had he not been so concerned for his beverage that he was protecting from drowning over himself. He looked like the statue of liberty mostly submerged. After Randy informed me of the situation, we both paddled against the current to keep the boat stationary long enough for him to climb aboard. He told us he had nearly been sucked under a log and drowned to death. This of course was hilarious but reflecting on it now, perhaps we should have shown a bit more concern.

The trip had initially been intended to end in Devonport, but we decided to give up on this idea—just nine kilometres short of our goal—in a town called Latrobe. The distance we travelled was around fourteen kilometres, which is a spectacular effort given our circumstances. The experience was a coming-of-age type one. If we were raised in a tribal situation, this is close to what I’d imagine our elders would have made us do to become men—perhaps without the liquor. I learned a lot about who I was and what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, that turned out simply to be ‘to have a good time’. This philosophy has so far proved to hinder my progress in life rather than help it. This day of complete madness set the definition for the word ‘fun’ from that point onward. Every enjoyable experience I have had since has had difficulty living up to this benchmark. As a grown up, some ten odd years later, I look back at that kid and think ‘what a complete dickhead’. Maybe present-me is just jealous because he has forgotten how to have fun. Either way, perhaps I should take this memory off its pedestal so I can enjoy the countless experiences waiting for me to find them. Or maybe my brief time on that river is as good as it gets. I don’t know yet, but I do know that if you give me a couple of mates with as many screws loose as I and a case of cheap liquor, we’ll find out.