White Water Rafting

The good thing about Sydney having the 2000 olympics is all the new stadiums that had to be built. Just a 20 minute drive from here, down the freeway and you come to Sydney Olympic Park, where the main part of the olympics were, but if you head 20 minutes the other direction you have Penrith, where the regatta centre is. The regatta centre is where they had the rowing and also the white water stadium where the kayaking was held. This here is where we are heading. For a Christmas present from the Rances this year I was given a voucher to go rafting, so a couple of weekends ago, we decided was the time to go. The day dawned rainy, and I thought what a day to go rafting, but thought your going to get wet anyway, so off I went.

The Crew

I met up with the Rance kids, Elisa, Daniel and Luke along with Simon and Cassie Scicluna and David Young. We had abit of an audience from our crews family, who videotaped and took photos for posterity. Before we started we had to sign a disclaimer in case anything happened and then we had to do a briefing and get our gear. A few of our crew were abit wimpy and needed wetsuits (sorry Daniel, Cass and Simon) but they were soon to pay for it, when the sun started coming through amidst the rain and we got out arms pumping.

We had to get out here, the ramp wouldn't take three boatloads this day on it, perhaps some of us had eaten a little too much Christmas Pudding.

Just strolling down the water

Hold on were going down

We were on the water for about an hour and a half and at one stage you have to put your paddles on the side of the course and you go and do what they call surfing, where you get put in a certain spot and the guide who is with you gets you all to do certain things at the same time and you have to try and stay in the raft. Well our guide said everyone comes out, but not us, and he tried and he tried to get us to flip. Elisa did end up falling out later on, and on our last run with three rapids to go, our front paddlers put us onto a concrete bank and that was the end of us all, we flipped right over and we all ended up floating on down. The course is man made and the rapids are made by putting concrete post in the right spots and depths, so when you come out you need to keep your legs up or you will hurt yourself as the water depth is no more than a metre deep in most places.

If your ever in the area, you need to give it a try, it's worth the money and the experience