Descending the muddy track, we hear it first: water urgently rushing, dropping, filling the normally silent valley with muffled sound. Standing at its edge, we shout to be heard.

They won’t last long – a month, two at most – but now we can say we’ve seen them: the Loddon Falls in flow.

The river dances to the tune of its country. From high on the divide near Trentham, it lunges to a fern-filled valley. Descending through mossy ravines, it leaps rocks and plunges again from cliffs.

Where headwaters join the dance, around Glenlyon, the river pushes aside snares and jumps stones littering its bed. Granite cliffs, starting low and building, send the waters plummeting. Where the valley floor flattens, the river froths in a pool.

On its travels the Loddon will be met by brimming streams and swollen creeks. Fortified, it will cut through banks, invade billabongs, perhaps take an ox-bow lake or two. It could even collect a bridge, a struggling tree or the inevitable dump of thoughtless trash.

As the day is smothered by cloud, we wish the river rain on its journey to the Murray.