Echuca & Moama . . . ….Day 62–9 weeks

25th May 2014

We have been on the road 9 weeks today and find ourselves in northern Victoria.

John & Denise went off to meet old friends they hadn’t seen for some time, while Lance & I crossed the Murray river to Moama which is in the state of New South Wales. The Murray is the third longest navigable river in the world, after the Amazon and Nile. We drove down a dirt track to the river and saw another paddle steamer, the EmyLou.

Paddle steamers and paddle boats have been on the Murray River and in the Murray-Darling Basin since 1853 when William Randell launched the first steamer the P.S. Mary Ann near Mannum,

On shore there was an old paddle steamer called the Ada.

……and here was also an old paddle.

Lance & I then went looking for the man selling Yabbies (a small freshwater crayfish). We followed the signs and arrived at the farm only to be told the last of the yabbies had been sold 20 minutes ago. There goes tea.

We stopped to look at the early Telegraph station, believed to be built in the 1850’s. It has been restored after an uproar at the proposed demolition in 2002.

We had lunch beside the Horseshoe Lagoon in Moama.

Around Echuca and Moama I have seen mentions of the great 1870 flood. Here is an extract I found about the flood:

“On 13 December 1870 Mounted Police Sergeant J.R. Ewens, officer in charge of the Blanchetown police station, wrote in his diary: ‘River higher than ever’. His record of the worst flood in the settled history of South Australia began as early as April that year when the sergeant wrote that the river was rising and steamers were moving again down the Darling with wool. After an extremely wet winter the river continued to rise until all the flat country along its banks was flooded drowning thousands of sheep and cattle. The Moorundie Police Station was destroyed and in Mannum rowboats could be taken in and out of the windows of the Bogan Hotel (now Mannum) and it was possible to step from the deck of the steamer Ariel on to the balcony of the hotel. The peak marked on a door at Walker’s Mill showed the waters to be roughly fifteen feet above normal and barges could sail up the main street to load flour at the mill. The river gradually fell in 1871 until by June it was apparently back to normal.”

This photo of the mill mentioned above suggests the flour was delivered to the second or third floor of the mill.

Of course in 1870 there were no locks on the river and it was before the irrigation settlements of Renmark and Berri. Today the water is very low and you can see the tree roots that have been exposed after floods. The water levels is controlled by the weirs upstream and down stream.

I took a walk to see the Cobb & Co Coach which is pulled by two beautiful Clydesdale horses.

The driver told me these horse weigh about 800 Kgs each.

Aren’t they beautiful.