Franklin River Rafting

It is a condition of booking a tour with us, and your responsibility to ensure that you are adequately insured for the full duration of the tour in respect of illness, injury, pre-existing medical conditions, death, loss of baggage and personal items and cancellation and curtailment. You must provide evidence to TEX that you have obtained personal travel insurance. You must ensure that your personal travel insurance covers all of the activities you expect to participate in.

Book the 8-day Franklin River Rafting trip if the river is what you came for. Book the 10-day Franklin River and Frenchmans Cap trip if you also want to climb tuynti/Frenchmans Cap at 1,443 m (4,734 ft) - it adds a summit day plus a spare day for weather, and the climb is a serious undertaking in its own right.

We run it ourselves. Tasmanian Expeditions is a self-operated brand (part of the World Expeditions Travel Group) - our own guides, our own rafts, our own safety equipment, and no third-party operator between you and the river. Our group ran the first commercial descent of the Franklin in 1978 and has run it every season since.

It is not suitable for people with limited mobility, for anyone under 14, or for anyone not confident swimming in a buoyancy vest. It is also not for travellers who want a comfortable base each night. If you want Tasmanian World Heritage wilderness without the water, the South Coast Track is the walk to look at instead.

You swim, and your guide gets you back in - which is exactly why we ask that everyone is confident swimming in a buoyancy vest. Your guides run the group through what to do before the first rapid, and every crew member wears a buoyancy vest, a helmet and enclosed footwear whenever the raft is on the water.

Swimming and upper-body work in the months before you travel is the preparation that matters most, along with day walking over steep, uneven ground carrying a load. You do not need to be an athlete, but you do need the fitness for six to eight hours a day of paddling and lifting rafts over rock.

The Franklin is the river Australia chose to keep. It runs through the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, and the only way to travel it is to raft it end to end - there is no road to it and no track beside it.

No single river holds that title, and any operator who tells you otherwise is selling. Difficulty depends on the water level on the day. The rivers most often named among the world's hardest commercially rafted whitewater include the Zambezi, the North Fork of the Payette, the Futaleufu and the upper Indus, and they earn it on rapid class.

Hard. It is roughly 7 km (4.3 miles) each way and 8 to 10 hours return, from base camp at the Irenabyss to a summit of 1,443 m (4,734 ft). The trail is very steep, often muddy and slippery, and the final section needs scrambling. Two days are set aside so weather can be waited out.

Shoes with soft, grippy soles that you are happy to soak all day. Dunlop Volleys are our specific recommendation — they grip wet Franklin bedrock better than most technical footwear and they drain. Avoid sandals, wetsuit boots and hard-compound soles, which slip badly on polished rock.

We supply the raft, wetsuit, paddling jacket, helmet, buoyancy vest, a 65-litre waterproof gear bag, all group camping and cooking equipment, and every meal on the river. You bring a sleeping bag rated to -5°C (23°F), a self-inflating mat, thermal layers, a headtorch and river shoes.

On riverbank beaches, in rainforest clearings and under long rock overhangs. Named camps on our itinerary include Coruscades inside the Great Ravine, Rafter’s Basin by Interlude Creek, Newlands Cascades, Blackman’s Bend and Sir John Falls on the Gordon. All camping equipment is supplied.

There are no toilets and no facilities of any kind on the river. We carry a portable contained toilet system and remove all solid human waste from the catchment on every trip, without exception. Washing is done in the river, with no soap or detergent.

Yes, and that is the expedition. You will be wet for most of each paddling day, and south-west Tasmania can deliver cold, rain and wind in any month of the season. We supply the wetsuit and paddling jacket. Your job is dry warm layers for camp and a sleeping bag rated to -5°C (23°F).

By yacht. The rafting finishes at Sir John Falls on the Gordon River, where the Stormbreaker collects us for a cruise down the lower Gordon and across Macquarie Harbour to Strahan. From Strahan it is roughly four and a half hours by bus back to Launceston.

Portaging, and being wet. Lifting a loaded raft over boulders in the Great Ravine is the hardest physical work of the trip and it arrives on days three and four, before you are used to it. Very few people say the rapids were the problem.

Anyone who needs a hot shower, a dry bed or a phone signal inside eight days. It is also wrong for anyone not confident in moving water, or who cannot carry a load over uneven wet rock. Once the trip starts there is no way off the river except downstream.

Our Franklin trips start and finish in Launceston, not Hobart. You need to be in Launceston the day before for a compulsory 1pm briefing, and we collect you early the next morning. The trip returns to Launceston in the late afternoon of the final day, usually around 5pm.

You do not need to be a strong swimmer, but you must be confident swimming in a buoyancy vest if you come out of the raft. A buoyancy vest and helmet are compulsory and supplied, and a professional guide paddles in every raft on the river.

Fit enough to paddle 6 to 8 hours a day, climb in and out of a raft repeatedly on steep rocky banks, and carry your own dry bag over rough wet ground during portages. You do not need to be an athlete. Balance and agility matter more here than speed or strength.

A shorter Franklin trip is only possible by using the Mt McCall road, cut through World Heritage wilderness during the dam campaign. We decided not to use that road and we have held that line. Every one of our departures runs the full navigable river, from Collingwood Bridge to the Gordon.

The rafting season runs from around late November to March, when water levels and weather are most reliable. Departures are limited and rafting permits for the Franklin are finite, so some trips around Christmas can fill well ahead.

You leave the river at Sir John Falls on the Gordon, where a yacht meets the group and sails down the Gordon River and across Macquarie Harbour to Strahan. It is a full day, and it is the only way out — there is no road. You are back in Launceston by around 5pm on the final day.

We raft rapids up to grade 4. Anything graded 5 or 6 is inspected from the bank and portaged — the rafts and all the gear are carried around it. That rule applies on every departure, regardless of who is on the trip.

If you have never rafted, the scale means little, so here is what it feels like from inside a raft. Grade 2 is moving water with small waves and an obvious way through - you paddle, you get wet, you are never in doubt. Grade 3 is bigger and busier, with waves breaking over the bow and rocks to steer around; the guide is calling strokes and you are working. Grade 4 is powerful and technical, a drop you have to enter in exactly the right place, where the calls matter and everyone in the raft has to make them together. Grade 5 and above is water we do not run with passengers, which is why we walk around it.

On the Franklin the grade of any given rapid changes with the water level, so the guides read the river on the day rather than working from a fixed list.

We suggest asking your pre/post tour accommodation about car parking or there are secure carparks in Launceston where you can pre-book a spot.

We raft rapids up to grade 4. Anything graded 5 or 6 is inspected from the bank and portaged - the rafts and all the gear are carried around it. That rule applies on every departure, regardless of who is on the trip.

If you have never rafted, the scale means little, so here is what it feels like from inside a raft. Grade 2 is moving water with small waves and an obvious way through, you paddle, you get wet, you are never in doubt. Grade 3 is bigger and busier, with waves breaking over the bow and rocks to steer around; the guide is calling strokes and you are working. Grade 4 is powerful and technical; a drop you have to enter in exactly the right place, where the calls matter and everyone in the raft has to make them together. Grade 5 and above is water we do not run with passengers, which is why we walk around it.

On the Franklin the grade of any given rapid changes with the water level, so the guides read the river on the day rather than working from a fixed list.

"Challenged? Yes. Safe? Always." - Roger Davis, Franklin River, March 2022

There is a COMPULSORY pre-departure briefing at 1pm on the day before departure in Launceston, where equipment is issued and fitted, you meet your guides and you pack your gear bag. Attendance is not optional — plan to arrive in Launceston the day before at the latest.

The trip finishes back in Launceston at approximately 5pm on the final day. Do not book onward flights or connections for that evening. The last day depends on the sail out from Sir John Falls and the drive back from Strahan, both weather-dependent. Book onward travel for the following day.

The Franklin is a wild river in south-west Tasmania, flowing through the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. There is no road to it, no track alongside it and no way to see the gorges it runs through except from the water. It joins the Gordon River, which flows out to Macquarie Harbour on the west coast.

The Franklin is famous twice over. It is one of the world’s great wilderness whitewater journeys - US based Outside magazine called it "The World’s Best River Journey" - and it is the river that was saved from a hydro-electric dam by the campaign of the early 1980s, one of the defining environmental campaigns in Australian history. The rainforest you raft through on day six exists because of it.

Yes. A hydro-electric scheme would have flooded the lower Franklin. It was stopped by a sustained public campaign and blockade in 1982–83, resolved by a High Court decision in 1983. Tasmanian Expeditions ran the first commercial rafting descent of the Franklin in 1978, before the campaign began.

The Franklin River is approximately 129km (80m).

The trip starts and finishes in Launceston, with a compulsory pre-departure briefing at 1pm the day before departure. You are driven to the put-in at Collingwood Bridge by private minibus, and you leave the river at Sir John Falls, where a yacht carries you down the Gordon River and across Macquarie Harbour to Strahan.

No previous rafting experience is required, but it is handy as this is a full commitment. You don't want to realise you don't like rafting 3 days in. What you do need is a good level of fitness, the confidence to swim in a buoyancy vest if you come out of the raft, and a willingness to take instruction quickly. Two professional rafting guides run every trip, with three to four paddlers plus a guide in each raft, so you are taught what you need as you go.

We grade it Moderate to Challenging. Expect six to eight hours a day of paddling and portaging, with heavy lifting over rocks around the rapids we do not run. The difficulty changes with the water level rather than with the calendar, so no two descents are the same. It is a genuine expedition, not a day trip with rapids.

Portaging means carrying the rafts and all the gear overland around a rapid that is too dangerous to run. On the Franklin it happens most often in the Great Ravine, where the river drops through a series of rapids in a narrow gorge. It involves lifting, scrambling over wet rock and working as a team, and it is the physically hardest part of the trip.

There is no mobile reception anywhere on the river. Guides carry emergency communications equipment and a group first aid kit on every trip, and both guides are trained for remote-area response. Evacuation from the Franklin is a serious undertaking, which is why the trip is graded the way it is and why the pre-departure briefing is compulsory.

Water level is the single biggest variable on the Franklin. High water makes the river faster and the rapids bigger but the portages shorter; low water means more time carrying rafts over rock. Guides adjust the route and the daily distance to the level on the day, which is why the itinerary is a guide rather than a timetable. In extreme conditions a trip may be held, rerouted or shortened for safety.

The Great Ravine is the most committing section of the Franklin; a deep, narrow gorge where the river drops through a sequence of named rapids including the Churn, Coruscades, Thunderush and the Cauldron. Much of it is portaged rather than paddled. It is the section people remember and the reason the trip needs eight days rather than four.

You camp for seven nights on the river. There are no huts and no formal campsites. We camp in caves and under rocky overhangs where the river provides them, and under tarpaulins where it does not — traditional tents are not used, because on the Franklin they are slower to pitch, heavier to carry and often impossible to peg on rock.

You wash in the river. There are no showers. Soap and shampoo - including biodegradable products - are not used in the water. Most people find it matters far less than they expect by about day two.

All rafting and safety equipment is provided, including a wetsuit, paddling jacket, helmet, buoyancy vest, a 65-litre waterproof gear bag and all group camping equipment. You bring your own sleeping bag and personal clothing. We recommend a self-inflating sleeping mat and a Crazy Creek-style camp chair — on a trip with no chairs and a lot of rock, both make more difference than their weight suggests.

You are wet all day, every day. A wetsuit and paddling jacket are provided for exactly that reason. Tasmanian west-coast weather can deliver and rain at any time of year, and the river runs cold regardless of the air temperature.

No. There is no mobile reception anywhere on the river, from the put-in at Collingwood Bridge until you reach Strahan, and no road access either.

Both guides carry emergency communications equipment and a group first aid kit, and are trained in remote-area response. Help can be raised from anywhere on the river. What changes in wilderness this remote is how long a response takes to arrive — which is why the trip is graded the way it is, and why the pre-departure briefing is compulsory.

Let family and friends know before you leave that they will not hear from you for the duration of the trip.

Unfortunately there are no charging facilities on this trip. We recommend bringing extra batteries or solar chargers for your phones. To conserve battery power on your mobile devices, turn your phones into flight mode.

You take only what fits in the 65-litre waterproof gear bag we provide. Everything else stays behind, and excess luggage can be stored with our team. Leave a set of clean, dry clothes in your stored bag for the trip back. After eight days on the river it is the most appreciated item you will pack.

Unfortunately there are no shower facilities on the trip. For those who are concerned about washing, you can have a quick refreshing dip in the Franklin River when we stop in the afternoons. However, for a real cleanse we recommend you bring baby wipes (remember to take them out with you as well!).

Every meal is provided from the first night on the river to the last morning — seven breakfasts, eight lunches and seven dinners — cooked fresh in camp by your guides on the riverbank. All dietary requirements are catered for when advised in advance. There is no resupply for eight days, so everything you eat is carried in the rafts from the moment you push off.

"We dined like kings." - Roger Davis, Franklin River, March 2022