What Would Bear Grylls Do?

If you haven't heard of Bear Grylls or Man vs Wild then you've probably been living under a rock somewhere.

Of course, if you've been living under a rock somewhere you might already have the requisite survival skills and not need Bear's advice.

But I'm starting near the end and not the beginning of this story...

We went in search of water.

Lake Ewlyamartup, as mentioned earlier, smelled like death and was was pretty shallow and gross. So, I, in my infinate wisdom, assumed that Lake Dumbleyung, being so much bigger and so much deeper.... and once upon a time, only a few years ago, in fact, I even swam in it ... I assumed it would have, well, you know... water in it!

Picked up the kayaks from Carl & Helen, and Mat and I headed to east Dumbleyung. We could have gone west towards Boyup Brook and actually rowed in the Blackwood River, but Dumbleyung was half the distance away, and that was definitely the tipping point in its favour.

When we got near, things didn't look promising.



Not much water in there!



But when we got down to the boat ramp. And we could see that there was water out there. Quite a long way out there mind you... I can remember swimming to that rock.... Anyway, we decided to go for a little stroll...

Yes, that's a boat ramp

Look! I'm wearing thongs in the snow!

That's not snow! It's SALT!

The water looked pretty shallow, so Mat decided to see how deep it was. We needed a bit more than ankle deep to do any paddling in, and it looked pretty shallow for as far as we could see. Hard to tell for sure though, so in he went!

If you can't go to the ocean...

And pretty suddenly it was deeper than ankles, and Mat was up to his knees in salty muddy crud!

Keen for a swim?

And this is where I started laughing and saying, "What would Bear Grylls do!?" And then laughed a whole lot more!



Mat had to sacrifice a thong to the depths, and then threw away the other one in frustration, but did a fine job of demonstrating the "spread your weight out and don't struggle too much" technique.

It was decided that the water was too shallow and the bottom too bottomless to risk going out. If we had managed to get out further we would have probably found deep enough water to paddle in, but if we got into any trouble - lost a paddle or boat or anything - we probably would have found ourselves stuck out there with no safe way back in to dry land.

So, instead of a paddle, we had a nice drive, a nice walk, a big laugh and a night in watching movies.