APAM Complete List Of Murray River Paddle Steamers & Ves

[thewharfonline]

Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting section of APAM. Now this thread will house a complete list of all the Murray River Paddlers past and present (I thought preserved as the list contains preserved) It also contains boats being built that have been named or at least registered and contain a ON- Official Number.

So far I've put together a list of all the Current paddlers including tourist boats, working boats, private boats, boats being restored and boats being constructed.

The list so far totals over 104. As such so far anyone that thinks the day of the Murray Paddler is dead is dead wrong!

Now I will embark on creating the second part of the list...adding the rest of the boats that will no longer be with us. You're going to get a whoping number of boats at the end.

So why am I doing this? Well firstly Roderick and I have been discussing this for awhile and he will be checking the 'Register' along with me. Secondly along with the articles on the boats that I have been writing for the main APAM articles I wanted to show just the vast amount of boats we had and here will then be a list that can be updated with new boats.

Then any member can also ask about any of the boat they find interesting on the list and I can produce some form of reply (similar to the APAM posts) that will describe the boat in more depth.

I also feel this is important because I don't want these boats to go unnoticed, the Australian education system chooses to bypass Murray River History even though it played such an important part in our countries history and the 300+ paddlers and 200+ barges deserve to be remembered for opening up inland Australia. Maybe one day a politician or a high ranking educator will come across this list and be stumped by the quantity of boats that have been virtually forgotten by Australians and decide to place this vital history into the education system.

Then there is the international scale. To show the international community just how important these boats were.

So why preserved paddlers...because some of these boats are so far gone that this is the only way to preserve them, to preserve their memories!

When the list is posted I hope you enjoy reading the sometimes humorous names, the images they conjure up and the stories that accompany them when you ask to know a little more.

Sean

[Roderick Smith]

Australia never had a Mark Twain equivalent.  Twain popularised USA Mississippi culture.  Twain also visited Australia, but I have never seen any comments made by him about our river trade.  His most famous quote referred to the Victorian gold-mining town Maryborough, which had a particularly large and ornate railway station: 'A railway station with a town attached'.
Our own Henry Lawson wrote prolifically of rural life, particularly shearers, western NSW and western Qld, but ignored the Murray-Darling system.
In the Victorian (state, not era) education system, grade/year 5 was designated as one for a detailed look at Australian history when I was a student at that level.  This is where I became familiar with the explorations of Sturt (seeking an inland sea, and discovering most of the components of the Murray-Darling system instead) and of the pioneering river navigation (the amazing coincidence of timing which resulted in Cadell and Randell racing into Swan Hill).
I suspect that today's syllabuses also ignore the importance of railways as a development tool.  WA joined the federation in 1901 on the condition that it would be connected to the eastern states by rail.  This was a superb engineering feat in remote and arid country in difficult times.
The system of locks and weirs on Murray River was another outcome of federation: NSW, Victoria & SA came to a three way agreement on managing the basin for irrigation and navigation.  Qld was not a party to the agreement, and has the attitude that any rain falling in Queensland must not cross the border into the Darling.  We are in the grip of the worst drought for decades.  Last week, a newspaper showed a photo of the Darling with a dry bed.  This had been a longer river than the Murray, and carried more river trade.
I will certainly be helping Sean with his project of listing all current boats, and James with his project of bringing wider river history to you via a website.  We would be very happy to welcome Paddleduckers to Australia next year (en masse, or individually) as we celebrate two river centenaries through June and July.  Michael has posted a link with the program.  Other names familiar in this group may well be seen as crew.

Regards,
Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Sean wrote: 'I don't want these boats to go unnoticed, the Australian education system chooses to bypass Murray River History even though it played such an important part in our country's history...'.