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The Franklin is one of the last truly wild rivers left in all of Australia. It has no dams, logging or agriculture in its entire catchment!!!

In the Winter of 2006, in the middle of one of the worst droughts to ever hit Australia a couple of Adelaide paddlers were wondering where they could find some rivers that might actually be flowing. Sick of paddling up and down stream on the ailing Murray we decided on the other iconic Australian river. The Franklin.

To understand the meaning of this trip to an Australian you need to understand some of the history of the river. In 1980 the Tasmanian planned to build dams on several sites along the Franklin and the neighboring Gordon Rivers. This would have flooded ancient Aboriginal sites, killed thousands of rare and threatened species of plants and animals and hidden forever one of the most beautiful pieces of Australia.

Under the leadership of Bob Brown and after the arrest of over 1400 protesters and the intervention of the Federal Government and High Court of Australia the dam was finally stopped three years later.

Since then The Franklin River has gone down in Australian paddling folklore because of the large powerful rapids, remoteness, notorious weather and history. It was for all of these reasons that we wanted to paddle it.