White water rafting on the Tully River with Raging Thunder

I love water sports so I’ve always wanted to do white water rafting, and I’d heard that Australia is one of the best places to do it as the weather and water is so warm.

So we booked up to do it on the Tully with Raging Thunder, which cost around $150 each for a full day rafting, a BBQ lunch and free pick up from our hostel (Jackaroo) in Mission Beach.

After a quick stop off to sign our lives away and have a safety briefing, it was life jackets and helmets on, and into the raft. October is still the dry season so the river wasn’t at its highest, but there’s a hydro electric dam at the top of the river that provides plenty of water to get you going!

I thought it was be a scary experience but considering we were in an inflatable boat bouncing down drops and around rocks, I felt surprisingly safe! Although I think George was a bit scared on some of the bigger Rapids 😉 It was a great buzz and we even got to jump in and let the rapids carry us down river a few times, which was so fun!

There was a lot more work to it than I expected with our instructor, Jed, yelling instructions at us such as ordering us to back paddle, or all jump to one side of the boat… or to just simply ‘hold on!’ ha! I think my favourite bit was when we had to do what Jed called the helicopter to get down one set of rapids. This involved one side rowing backwards and the other side rowing forwards, resulting in us spinning down the rapids! We got five spins in, and I think we laughed the whole way down! The time we went backwards down a drop and deliberately capsized the boat was also pretty epic!

It was a fantastic day out and we couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces – definitely worth every penny! Even despite my belly flop off a big rock at the end… Haha 🙂