The Meander begins as a mountain stream and stays one for exactly as long as it takes to reach the lake. From the plateau of the Great Western Tiers at thirteen hundred metres it falls to under four hundred at the head of Huntsman Lake in thirteen kilometres, dropping over Meander Falls in its first three and taking in Mother Cummings Rivulet at ten and Sales Rivulet at the lake’s edge, and the fall of the river drawn on this page shows a line that is nearly vertical for its first five kilometres and steep for the rest. Inland Fisheries Service describes it plainly: clear, boulder-strewn fast water through State Forest, with small resident browns that take some catching. That is the whole of it and it is enough. There is no gauge, no dam release and no farmland, only pocket water between boulders, myrtle and eucalypt shade, and fish that have seen few flies and still refuse a bad cast. It is the one piece of the river Huntsman Lake did not change. Come in the warm months with a short rod and a dry-dropper, walk in from Meander Falls Road, and fish it as you would any alpine creek: one cast to a pocket, a step upstream, and no expectation of a big fish. What you get instead is a wild river at its start, and a long afternoon nobody will interrupt.