The island photographed by Peter Dombrovskis that became the image for the campaign to save the Franklin river from being flooded by a dam

The only way to see the Franklin River close up is by raft or kayak.  You can fly over it, but to see it in all of its moods, to dwell along its shores, to see the platypus at play, you have but one choice and that is hop into a raft.

Alongside 11 other people led by three licensed guides, I rafted its rapids for seven days and camped in the wilderness under open skies or tarpaulins when it rained.

Constant noise from the start of cascading river water and waterfalls down the ravine walls. Wetness and trees everywhere, always, and my flesh wet always, too.  By day three I smelt doggish.

About six or so rapids were un-navigable – too dangerous, usually where the ravines narrow.  To avoid them, and to get the rafts and gear over or around is difficult. Ropes are sometimes the only way to climb these, where I pulled myself up by hand, standing out from the cliff face and suddenly trusting the rope and iron picks fixing the rope I’ve only just met, all the while with a 20kg pack on my back to share the moment with: I found this focused my mind.

Without mobile phones, no reception, no watches or jewellery it’s unavoidable to lose track of time.  Yesterdays became lifetimes ago.  The time of the day became marked by sun and shade. Without seeking it, the only time became now.

Me, a few days into the river

There’s nothing like rafting the Franklin to focus a man’s mind.

Life alternately shrinks down to, “Am I wet or cold, or, about to drown?”, and opens out to, “This is endless beauty, magic.”

We saw a quoll (well two of us did) and a platypus (I would write the plural of that but the unfinished debate among fellow rafters about the correct plural compels me to only say we saw two of them – it may be some time before I return to my previous proclivities for grammar, spelling and such).

Hard times were there from a growing tedious certainty that each morning I’d have to put on a wet cold wetsuit and undergarments.  Rotten stuff. After ‘wetting up’ (formerly known as getting dressed) and climbing on the raft so the body that was mine in it floated off for the first time of the day it was the risks and new world of the next bend and rapid which dispelled my cold wetness to somewhere  in what was becoming an expanding animal me.

Waterfalls, every 100 or so metres

Seven days and two good sleeps, the best on the last night.

Then what a note some of us ended on. Six of us took off in a seaplane in calm, generous sunlight.

The Franklin from our seaplane after we cleared it’s cliffs

The seaplane was only able to escape the river and scale the cliffs by banking through river bends ‘til, about three bends later, enough height had been gained for us, embraced in a new roaring noise this time from the one engine (that can’t be enough, I thought) to rise high enough to see the river that had been our home and heart for the last week.

But imagine this.

About 40 minutes later we had a two minute descent from 5500 feet down past a mountain dominating Hobart (Mt Wellington), and made a long curving half circle to land on the Derwent river, there to taxi to a wharf just 200 metres from our hotel, The Henry Jones Art Hotel.

Flying down to ‘land’ on the Derwent river then taxi to Constitution Dock where we walked to the nearby Henry Jones Art Hotel

Sitting under the shower there, washing off a week of sweat, smells and feeling the known – ‘sane’? – world return this much seemed clear; you got to do the hard stuff to know how peace feels.  At least I did.

[The food, Nant Whisky - like a butterscotch bikkie, and the clear light of Hobart can be seen in these photos - we soaked these up before the trip and I held on to memories of them:

Little did my smiling self know what the week ahead on the river held for me

• Kylie’s review of the Water by Nature rafting trip is here.