River Life on Huck: The Dream Comes True
Living on and travelling the length of the mighty Murray River had always been high, if not on top of my bucket list. In the mid 1990’s the dream came true and this lifelong goal got the tick on the above-mentioned list. The waters of the Murray began flowing through my veins from an early age. I shared my father’s love of the river which was only fueled by regular family houseboat holidays throughout my growing years.
Dad would pilot large heavy houseboats in every nook and cranny of the Murray he could. We covered outstanding distances over many years from Murray Bridge in South Australia to well upstream of Mildura in Victoria.
The memories of adventure, misadventure and the absolute beauty of this incredible river has never, and will never leave me.
So, around the mid-nineties Miss Linda and I were sitting on the back of a houseboat that we were holidaying on with friends. We were sipping on some wine and taking in the tranquil evening scene when we had one of our “light bulb” moments. A switch had been flicked and right there we made the decision to “Do this!” A decision that in many ways changed the rest of our lives.
At the time I was working in the extremely high-pressure world of commercial FM radio in Adelaide and after many years was reaching career goals that I never thought I could. Miss Linda had been continuing her specialist Aged Care nursing career in the city.
Commercial radio had taken its toll and my feet had been itchy for some time and we were both ready for another nomadic change in our lives. So, we set about making plans, plans to leave our careers in the big smoke and not go for a holiday on the Murray, but rather, live on the river indefinitely with a goal to travel its entire length, working as we went.
Of course, to do this one needs a boat
and we shopped around for a long time until we found an appropriate vessel. Boats aren’t cheap, stating the obvious, and houseboats are incredibly expensive and well out of our budget. We were looking at more traditional old wooden boats, but still struggling to find something that could achieve what we needed it to.
Then we saw her, ‘Huck Finn’. Run down, in need of some TLC but sound and within our budget. I knew as soon as I saw this 22foot 1956 Bluebird class, Blaxland twin powered, bond wood Cruiser that she was ‘the one’ to take us on our journey. There was an incredible amount I didn’t know about her, but by hell did I learn over time.
What I haven’t mentioned is that at the time my knowledge of things boating was pretty much zilch.
Let alone purchasing an old wooden boat that was to become our home for the next two years and take us on an adventure of a lifetime. ‘Huck’ had no electricity, no running water, no shower or toilet and not even a reverse gear. Still, something deep inside me told me that this was ‘the one’ and I went with my gut feeling and I am so glad I did.
A deal was struck and “F*#k”, ‘Huck’ was ours. Now what do we do? What we did over the next two days turned out to be the greatest misadventure of the entire trip. The initial 48 hours of our life on ‘Huck’ is a story worthy of its own feature length movie. This along with so many adventures and misadventures we will share with you through the stories of ‘Finchys Australia’. But, for now we were the proud owners of ‘Huck Finn’ our floating home base for what was to become one of the greatest adventures of our lives.
I am going to skip those first 48 hrs but we did manage to stumble our way over the 58 river kms to ‘Huck’s new temporary home at Long Island Mariner, just downstream of Murray Bridge. Here preparation (and now repairs) began for our future on ‘Huck’ and the Murray River.
I mentioned my radio career. At the time I was working at a fantastic radio station. SA-FM was simply legendary in the pioneering of commercial FM radio in Australia and I had forged a career in production and was tasting a deal of success. Circumstances lead to me being offered the position of Production Manager. This at the time in Australian radio was pretty much the top of the mountain in my chosen career. So, the look of surprise was priceless when I told management I would get back to them about their lucrative offer.
The look on their faces was even more shocking when I thanked them for their generous offer, but said, “No thanks”. The offer was the culmination of an incredible amount of hard work and it meant a lot to me to have reached a point where those radio gurus had that kind of confidence in my ability. We however, had different plans sitting in a mariner on the Murray River. I explained to management our intentions and they asked, “How long do you intend to live on this boat?” The answer, “As long as it takes”.
The next two years were spent living out a dream.
At times we were in extremely remote and isolated locations with no contact with any other humans for weeks at a time. We had no way of contacting anyone either. We had no phones (because there weren’t mobile phones back then) no two-way radio, no computers, no electricity, no fridge, no 12v power, just a basic twin burner gas stove. We did have an AM radio which received signal occasionally, a good first aid kit, a shotgun and a shitload of common sense.
This is the back story and events that lead to what was truly one of the greatest stories our lives. A dream that had adventure, misadventure and a pioneering type lifestyle that money can’t buy. The dream to live on and experience traveling the length of what I refer to as an ‘old friend,’ ‘The Mighty Murray River.’
