The Murray most people see is lovely. Wide, golden-lit, classic. But there’s a completely different river running behind it – through forest channels barely wider than your paddle span, past lagoons that don’t appear on tourist maps, into places where the only sounds are frogs, water, and whatever bird you’ve just startled out of a red gum.

Getting into that river requires a canoe. Here are five spots worth the effort.

Quick Picks:

  • Barmah’s forest channels are the headline act – ancient, labyrinthine, and genuinely wild
  • Moira Lake rewards early risers with birdlife that needs to be seen to be believed
  • Gunbower Creek runs long and quiet, with almost no boat traffic
  • Perricoota’s creek arms feel genuinely unvisited, even on a busy long weekend
  • The Torrumbarry billabongs are small, still, and completely overlooked

1. The Forest Channels of Barmah National Park

Barmah is home to the world’s largest river red gum forest. Inside it, a maze of shallow channels shifts with every flood season – some wide enough to paddle two abreast, others narrowing to a tunnel of branches with the water below going perfectly dark.

Wildlife doesn’t scatter here the way it does near the main channel. Platypus surface close enough to make you stop mid-stroke. Herons stand motionless in the shallows. In autumn and winter, the light through the canopy does something genuinely unfair to photographers.

You can reach Barmah by water from Echuca, which makes it a natural half-day trip from a moored houseboat – paddle in the morning, back for lunch with a story worth telling.

2. Moira Lake

Moira Lake sits within the Barmah complex but earns its own mention. It’s a wide, shallow floodplain lake, and reaching it properly means threading the forest channels to get there – which is half the fun.

What’s waiting is a big open stretch of water ringed by red gums, often thick with pelicans, spoonbills, and ibis in numbers that feel almost prehistoric. Get there before 8am, and you’ll have it to yourself. The light sits low and flat, everything reflects, and you’ll end up paddling slower than intended just to keep it going a bit longer.

3. Gunbower Creek

Gunbower Creek branches off the Murray west of Echuca and runs parallel to the main channel for roughly 50 kilometres, passing through Gunbower National Park on the Victorian side. It’s accessible, but sees a fraction of the traffic.

What you get is long, unhurried paddling through old gums – kingfishers darting low across the water, the odd wombat on the bank looking personally offended by your presence, and that satisfying sense of having found something most Murray visitors completely miss. It works well as a day trip or as an anchor point for a Murray River canoe hire excursion across multiple days.

4. Perricoota’s Creek Arms

On the NSW side near Moama, Perricoota State Forest hides a tangle of creek arms that branch off the Murray into dead-water channels and quiet lagoons. No signs, no car parks, no interpretive boards.

There are ancient trees, still water, and short-necked turtles surfacing beside your hull when you least expect it. Navigation here is part of the appeal – you’re working on instinct as much as any map, and every channel feels like it might lead somewhere no one else has been this season. It very possibly has.

If you’re also curious about what’s on land nearby, the Echuca Moama attractions guide covers what’s worth doing on both sides of the river.

5. The Billabongs Near Torrumbarry Weir

Torrumbarry Weir backs up a section of the Murray south of Echuca, creating a series of quiet billabongs and backwaters along both banks. They’re small, often shallow, and almost entirely ignored by visitors sticking to the main channel.

In summer, the water warms and birdlife gathers. In winter, the mist sits low over the pools until mid-morning, which sounds like a hardship and is actually the best possible reason to be out before breakfast. You can paddle a full loop in an hour and feel like you’ve earned something.

Use a Houseboat as Your Base

Here’s the thing about canoe exploration on the Murray – it’s considerably better when you have somewhere excellent to come back to.

Houseboat hire on the Murray puts you right on the water, moored wherever you like. Anchor near Barmah, spend the morning threading forest channels, then return to a proper lunch on the deck, cold drinks in the afternoon, and a spa before the sun goes down. It’s genuinely the best version of this kind of trip: wild during the day, no-compromise comfortable by evening.

We also offer stand-up paddleboard hire in Echuca if the backwaters look a little too calm for your liking, and our 5-day Murray River houseboat itinerary is worth a look if you’re still working out how to structure your time on the river.

The backwaters are out there. A paddle gets you in. The houseboat makes the whole thing a trip worth taking twice.