Each year, it seems a little harder to find original expeditions, but Alan Davison’s 6,800km kayak journey certainly qualifies. He called his solo kayak journey “Australia’s longest inland paddle.”
Though we can’t confirm it’s the longest, it’s certainly one of them. A mammoth 136-day undertaking, it took him through the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn and winter, stitching together a route that began in Condamine, Queensland, near Brisbane, and finished at Coorong, South Australia. It traced the Condamine, Balonne, Bokhara, Darling, Murrumbidgee, Murray, and Coorong River systems.
This wasn’t all new territory for Davison, an accomplished kayaker who had previously completed source-to-sea descents of the Murray (2,500km), Darling (1,600km), and Murrumbidgee (1,200km). However, stitching them all together — with a lengthy detour to fit in the Murrumbidgee — represented a significantly expanded challenge.
Davison’s route. Photo: Alan Davison
Queensland and the Condamine River
On April 10, Davison set out from Warwick, in southern Queensland, on the Condamine River in a 5.2m Prijon Kodiak kayak. Yet, he couldn’t ease into the paddle; the Beardmore Dam closes its gates in winter, causing water levels in the Condamine River to drop precipitously.
“The first leg was a sprint, with my fingers crossed that the trip wasn’t going to end prematurely,” he wrote.
Low water levels, weirs, and road crossings made this opening section tricky, but he still knocked over roughly 1,000km in 16 days.
The Culgoa floodplains
Continuing on the Balonne River and into the Culgoa floodplains, Davison was now fairly remote, with no cell coverage.
On the Bokhara River, paperbark trees made it an obstacle course: “On the worst day, I had to do around 50 portages and likely around 150 difficult traverses through the canopies; 3 or 5 point turns, pulling myself over logs, breaking off branches to open a path through, scraping on mud around the edge.”
Despite all the scrambling, he notched another 500km in 10 days.
Photo: Alan Davison
Barwon and Darling
By May 6, Davison had completed the Bokhara and continued east on the Barwon and Darling Rivers, which flow for 1,700km through outback country before joining the Murray. This area swings between bone-dry stretches and areas of flooding, and Davison was lucky to arrive behind a moderate flood that he could ride downstream. The floodwaters meant he could leave the narrow river channel and paddle across flooded plains when convenient.
While paddling the lower Darling, Davison stopped twice to rescue trapped animals stuck in the muddy banks.
At the end of the lower Darling River, and with another 1,700km down and over 50 days into his expedition, Davison would now head upstream on a massive 2,500km detour up the Murrumbidgee.
A quick break to rescue a goat. Photo: Alan Davison
The Murrumbidgee detour
“Curiosity if this was possible was the main driving factor for this rather long detour,” Davison wrote.
The Murrumbidgee delivers irrigation water across New South Wales. In summer, flows can surge above 10,000 megaliters per day, but in winter they drop significantly. Yet Davison was determined, and lucky, with a “good low flow” for much of the next 52 days. The flip side of a consistent flow was that the detour became monotonous. Despite this, Davison described it as a “physically challenging and rewarding detour.”
The final stretch? The Lower Murray and Coorong
Davison took a week off before beginning the final stretch of his long, inland paddle. On July 24, he pushed back out on the Murray, Australia’s longest river.
Paddling through past multicolored cliffs, red gum forests, and “towering sandstone cliffs” below the town of Renmark, he finally emerged into a lagoon system at the Murray Mouth. Davison had cruised through another 1,032km, taking his total distance to 6,800km by the time he exited his kayak at Coorong near Adelaide on August 23.
Over 119 paddling days, he suffered two capsizes (both after getting caught on snags) and averaged nearly 57km per day, with a longest push of 120km in 15 hours on the Darling.
Davison at Murray Mouth. Photo: Alan Davison
There and back again
Technically, his expedition ended here — at least for the purposes of our year-end list. But in a surprise twist, Davison wasn’t done. It now appears he is heading home, not by plane, but rather paddling back upstream, first up the Murray (bringing the combined total distance for the trip to “10,575km over 215 days” with at least 22 rest days) and now into the Darling River basin.
Needless to say, this takes an already enormous trip and supersizes it. Though ocean kayak journeys sometimes top this sort of distance, inland paddles are generally far shorter, and Davison’s claim of Australia’s longest inland paddle strengthens by the day as he works his way back upstream. Looking outside of Australia, his distance now easily eclipses source-to-sea trips on the Amazon.
Exactly how far he goes is out of his control, as water levels drop ahead of him.
“It’s about 10 days from Bourke to Walgett, my next major target, that may or may not be the final destination for the trip. Desperately need rain in the Northern Rivers if I have any hope of reaching Goondiwindi [a town in Queensland],” he wrote on December 9.
Whatever the final distance, Davison’s herculean effort and wonderfully original idea make it one of the top expeditions of 2025.
