PV Shay has been bought by an Echuca owner, and has been relocated from Swan Hill.
PS Etona has been slipped for major hull work, and is being lengthened by 4 m aft of the engine, to provide a larger dining saloon.
The second road bridge over the Murray, downstream of the general port area, is to be finished by the end of the year, possibly September.
Roderick Smith
Sun.15.11.20 Melbourne 'Herald Sun'. Break for the border. KENDALL HILL
Above: Echuca Wharf on the Murray River, Vic.
What it’s like for a stranded travel writer to feel the freedom of a wide open road again
After months of being very good, staying at home for the sake of state and country, in the final week before Victoria eased restrictions I made a run for it. Curiosity finally got the better of my inner journalist. I had to see what life was like beyond Melbourne’s fabled “ring of steel”. So I got my paperwork in order and set off to breach the city’s 25km force field. The ring of steel, it turned out, was not so tough. At the Gisborne South checkpoint, which was flanked by a booze bus and white marquees, it took all of 20 seconds to break free. “What have you got for me?” asked a smiling policeman. “I’m just going up to Swan Hill and the border towns. It’s a newspaper job.” “Yep, no worries!” And I’m through. No more questions asked. It’s difficult to describe the freedom of driving on the open road when for 12 weeks your world’s been bound to a 5km radius from home. I can’t remember the last time life flew by at 110kmh. There’s a faint sense of trepidation, but also exhilaration as I charge into the (still) forbidden land, beneath the biggest, bluest, warmest sky I’ve seen since March. Drunk with opportunity, aching with the temptation of it all. I pass signs for Mount Macedon, Kyneton, Daylesford, and long to visit all of them, but my goal is much further away yet: the border city of Swan Hill, about four hours’ drive north of Melbourne and as far as I can legally go from home. I stop in Bendigo for a salad roll, my roadtrip snack of choice. Absolutely everyone is in masks. True, the students wandering back from lunch to Bendigo Senior Secondary College (my alma mater) wear theirs casually under the chin, but I don’t see anyone without one. It’s the same story wherever I venture in regional Victoria. This is why we did so well containing our rampant coronavirus outbreak. We stuck tight to the rules. In roadside paddocks I see sheep – and lambs, as white and pure as snow – and brown cows and candyfloss galahs flapping over golden fields. I stay at the Lady Augusta, the highest rated of Swan Hill’s 15 motels, and relish the brick-wall décor and the rare thrill of sleeping somewhere that is not my home. Next day, Cup Day, I set out for the old river port of Echuca via beautiful Lake Boga and (possibly) Australia’s largest inland island (see breakout). Echuca is pumping. I can barely believe my eyes watching streets throng with tourists at outdoor settings – eating, drinking, ice-creaming. There’s even live music in the beer garden of Henry’s Bridge Hotel. I pop into St Anne’s Winery because it isn’t busy and I want to (a) taste some wine, and
(b) chat to staff there about what lockdown’s been like for them. Stupid me. I forgot I can’t do wine tastings just now – or sit in cafes or restaurants – because I’m from Melbourne. Plague city. You can flee lockdown but you can’t escape its restraints. The manager explains the inconsistencies of border-region confinement. She lives in Moama, just over the Murray River bridge, and yet some days, she says, it can take 90 minutes to get home because the single-lane checkpoint queue is so long.No one wears masks in the promised land across the river. “I get to go home and go zing!” she says, motioning to rip off her mask. “It makes zero sense. It’s not just one state’s set of rules we’re following; in this area we have to follow both.” (Border life’s set to return to normal next week when New South Wales reopens to Victoria, where all travel restrictions were lifted last Monday.)
After being denied service at St Anne’s I stroll across to the Echuca Hotel, which is brimming with Cup Day revellers at veranda tables. I fancy joining them until I see a large sign on the pub’s door: “If you are from Melbourne, please do not enter.” It’s Cup Day in Echuca and I can’t get a drink. Is there anything more un-Australian?
I spend the second night at Rutherglen, which I’d naively booked thinking I could tour vineyards there and chat to winemakers. Instead I head home the next morning, taking my time to savour the wildly beautiful bush landscapes. After barely taking the wheel in months, I clock up more than 1200km in 48 hours.
On that final night, sitting on the back porch of the Walkabout Motel, gazing at peachy dusk sky while lambs bleat and swallows chatter in the eaves, a microbat zooms right in front of me and swallows a bug. And suddenly life feels normal and extraordinary again.
There’s a faint sense of trepidation but also exhilaration as I charge into the (still) forbidden land, beneath the biggest, bluest, warmest sky I’ve seen since March
201115Su-Melbourne'HeraldSun'-Echuca-boats-ss.jpg
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