A s Hayley Talbot was making her way down the entirety of Clarence River’s 400km in an unassisted kayak, a man jokingly called out to her from the riverbank: “Hey! Are you that ridiculous girl, doing that ridiculous trip, in that ridiculous boat?”
A couple of years earlier, Talbot had become a mother to two young sons. But with the sense of identity loss that can often accompany early motherhood, she felt a pull to reconnect with a more independent and stripped-back version of herself. It was this pull that gave Talbot the idea to kayak the river that she’d played alongside as a child and knew so well.
By the end of her “ridiculous trip”, and despite garnering a broken arm and a sunken craft at one point, Talbot became the first known person to kayak the river solo, from source to sea, completely unsupported.
But her journey didn’t end there. The trip took 14 days, but the impacts lasted the next six years. Soon after returning, Talbot discovered news of exploratory mining licences that threatened the freshwater river, inspiring her to become the driving force behind exposing the damage and saving the Clarence.
Released in early 2024, Talbot’s documentary Rivertree tells the story of the Clarence River and those who live upon its banks. It shines a light on the issue of proposed copper and cobalt mining on the river, something which Talbot says would have devastating environmental impacts, polluting the water, destroying ecosystems and affecting local industries.
Kayaking the Clarence
The river has always been home for Talbot. She grew up near Yamba, NSW, in a village with three streets and beside a lake that feeds into the Clarence River. Even after moving to the city at 18 and travelling a little, a deep-rooted love for her hometown soon brought her back. “I definitely have strong roots,” says Talbot. “I now live probably not even 100m from my childhood home.”
But 2016 was a year of change for Talbot. She was now a mother to two young sons and the family had moved to Sydney for a year for her husband’s job. “I was wondering how I would mother and raise children in the world when I felt like I didn’t even know myself, where I was or who I was,” says Talbot. “The river kind of became a metaphor for where I was at.”
That was when she had the idea to solo kayak the river. “I started to have this feeling within me that I wanted to see who I was with everything cut away, all my conditioning and all the societal pressures. I know I was feeling those pressures as a young mother. I wanted to prove to myself that I can sustain myself in the wild, I can find my way home and I can do all that solo and unassisted. It became really important to me to do it by myself.”
In preparation, she spoke with bass fishermen and local Indigenous knowledge holders and was supported by childhood friend, former pro-surfer and elite athlete coach, Dan Ross. She took navigation and bush survival courses. She learned how to kayak, how to fish and forage, read the weather, understand the medicinal uses of plants and how to stitch wounds and stabilise broken bones.
She knew there would be dangers on the river andsome of them gave Talbot sleepless nights ahead of her journey. She would be camping in dingo territory, navigating waterfalls on the river and paddling an “impassable gorge” that several others had perished trying to cross. She’d also be passing through some dangerous and completely unpoliced zones, areas where local police informed her, “No one’s coming to help you if anything goes wrong.”
Between a rock and a hard place
Talbot’s voyage wasn’t all smooth sailing. When her kayak went over rapids and got jammed between boulders on the second day, she was forced to quickly escape to avoid getting washed underneath the kayak and potentially drowning. “In getting out of my boat, I capsized it and badly injured my arm, which I didn’t know at the time,” says Talbot. “I was able to scramble to safety, but the boat was completely submerged. It was underwater.”
Piece by piece, Talbot dismantled the kayak, heaved it onshore and spent several hours reassembling it, something she hadn’t trained for. The kayak was damaged, but useable. “I tried to put my bags back in the boat, but nothing fit where it did before, even my legs didn’t fit in the boat anymore. From that point, I had to have my knees kind of up around my chest and cuddle over the top of my knees.”
When she came down from the adrenalin, the pain in her arm intensified. “I assumed that I had soft tissue tears. I was in bed, massaging my arm and then I woke to the most radical pain,” she says. Despite this, Talbot continued, stabilising her arm and adjusting her paddling technique to overcome the pain.
Shortly afterward, she passed campers on the riverbank — including the man who asked her whether she was “that ridiculous girl doing that ridiculous trip in that ridiculous boat” — who invited her to stop for a cup of tea. One of them was a nurse who helped secure Talbot’s injured arm and gave her some food.
Determined not to give up and wanting to set an example to her sons, she powered on until the end. It was worth it. Throughout the trip, Talbot felt deeply connected with both herself and nature. Camping under the stars, drinking, feeding and sustaining herself from the river.
“It was night six and I’d built a beautiful campfire by the river. I went to sleep in my tent and I heard dingoes come in close. I had one call on one side and it was answered on the other side of me,” says Talbot, who had been fearful of encountering wild dogs on her trip. “There was this release, this feeling of, ‘This is exactly what I came for, and I’m not scared of them anymore.’ I think that was one of my major rites-ofpassage moments as a woman and as a mother.”
Rivertree
That inner peace didn’t last long. When Talbot returned home, she discovered the river was under threat from several rare earth mineral mining licences, the number of which has since increased and currently sits at over 40. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “I was shocked that this holy place I had just come down through was under threat from companies that were doing exploratory mining and drilling.”
Like her boat after it capsized, things didn’t quite fit together in the same way for Talbot after her journey. “What I had experienced had completely changed me,” she says. “As far as anyone knows, I was the first person — definitely the first woman — to solo navigate the river from the source to the sea and I really wanted to show people what I had seen. Water purifies us, it unites us and joins us. It doesn’t care who we are, what’s in our bank account, what our skin colour is, we all need it.”
Talbot was ignited with renewed passion for the river and became the driving force behind a documentary to raise awareness of the issue. Alongside friend Dan Ross and filmmakers Matty Hannon and Gary Parker from Thunderbox Films, and support from outdoor brand Patagonia, Talbot created a film tracing the original journey she’d taken down the Clarence River. Along the way, the crew interviewed local people to uncover the mining industry’s plans to dig up the hills behind their homes for proposed copper and cobalt mining, and the impacts it would have on them.
Rivertree premiered in January 2024. More than 1500 people gathered to watch the film projected onto the side of the Yamba Water Tower. It has since been shown in sold-out free screenings in Burleigh Heads, Byron Bay, Torquay and Melbourne, and a further regional tour of the film is planned.
Pumpkin soup
Looking to the devastation of mining on other waterways offers insight into why Talbot and the documentary’s crew team are so passionate about protecting the Clarence River. The Melbourne screening of Rivertree was shown alongside 2023’s Bad River, another documentary that explores the impact of mining on the Queen River in Tasmania. According to Bad River, the Queen River has been so polluted by local copper mining that it is now unable to support life and is considered Australia’s most polluted waterway. The toxic runoff has given the river a sticky orange colour, causing the locals to brand it “pumpkin soup river”.
There’s plenty at stake for the Clarence River, according to Rivertree. Not only do First Nations people hold deep cultural ties to the waterways and surrounds, but the river’s wetlands and forests are vital habitats for numerous wildlife species such as platypus, koala, freshwater turtles and the endangered black-necked stork. Industries including fishing, dairy, sugarcane, livestock, crops and tourism also rely on the river. These industries could be damaged or wiped out if the river is polluted, affecting jobs and the local economy.
Efforts to find solutions are ongoing and Rivertree will be communicating with their newsletter subscribers to let them know when they can help and how. “We’re looking at different options, whether it’s National Park
status or World Heritage Listing, they’re the longgame considerations,” says Talbot. “Or a moratorium on those areas for no mining, but those end-game actions are still being fleshed out.”
Meanwhile, Talbot has used her platform to direct people to a petition set up by the Clarence Catchment Alliance opposing the mining exploration. It amassed more than 10,000 signatures and was debated in the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales in 2021.
Kick-starting koalas
Talbot’s passion for creating environmental change extends beyond just the banks of the river. Living in northern NSW, an area deeply affected by the “black summer” bushfires of 2019–2020, Talbot was crushed to see the impact on the environment and the local community. Over the course of the summer, 703 homes were lost in northern NSW alone. It’s also estimated that more than 60,000 koalas were either killed or affected during the fire season. Seeing this devastation firsthand inspired Talbot to do something to help heal both the environment and the local community.
“Where we live was virtually decimated,” says Talbot. “Our houses were saved but everything around us was burnt to the ground. People were deeply grieving those bushfires. “I said to my husband: ‘I just want to plant trees. I don’t know what, I don’t know how, I don’t know where, I just want to put my hands in the soil and create life there again or at least feel like I’m part of life coming back.’”
Talbot suggested the idea to a scientist who was working in the co-working space of Talbot’s creative agency business, Blanc Space Agency. Through their knowledge of ways to access funding, the scientist suggested ways to make her idea a reality. This led to a conservation project in 2021, in collaboration with the NSW Koala Strategy, which saw Talbot and the local community plant 6000 koala food trees in a koala corridor in the Clarence Valley. In an effort to provide new habitats, the new trees will contribute to the NSW Government’s goal to double koala numbers in NSW by 2050.
What’s my river?
Once back on dry land, Talbot discovered that her strength and perseverance on the river had inspired others. One of those people was a woman who approached her on the school pick-up. “She introduced herself and said, ‘I followed your journey. When you were on the river, I was coming through a really bad experience. I had to go to Brisbane to get this cancer cut out. I was really thinking of your journey when I was going through that. It made me feel strong, thank you.’ That really rocked me.”
When a local woman hosted an art night called “Alchemy of the River”, in which people were invited to creatively respond to Talbot’s journey, Talbot penned a spoken word poem to read at the event. The poem’s final words were:
“So if I stand here today as any sort of advice giver, It’s that you go away and think to yourself, What’s my river?”
You can find out more about Rivertree Film and join their newsletter at rivertreefilm.org.
