Life on the Murray (Australia)

[Roderick Smith]

Murray River boating isn't just about paddlesteamers, snags, scenery and sunshine.
Very much we are in contact with Australian history, across many eras.  River trade opened inland Australia: mainly wool, later irrigation produce.  Today, water use is a major political topic: greenies vs food production and world exports.  There was an era when it was thought that the resource was unlimited.  Poor irrigation practices led to major salinity problems, as bad as the dust storms of the 1920s.  Today, the resource is used more intelligently, and steadily pipelines are replacing channels for irrigation, reducing the evaporation loss.  As the major cities take up former market-garden land for sprawling suburbs, the Murray basin is more and more the source of domestic fruit & vegetables.  The stone-fruit and citrus industries have been decimated by imports, and dried-fruit has morphed into wine production (and Australia is a major world producer in both quantity and quality).  Navigation is impaired by anti-dredging and anti-desnagging policies: there has to be an intelligent quantity rather than a totally robotic chant 'no, no, no'.  All the textbooks quote 'one of the world's longest navigable waterways': for much of the time it isn't, even for purpose-evolved flat-hull shallow-draft vessels.

Here is a wonderful thread from Historic Commercial Vehicles Club.
Establishing river settlements was a way of coping with the 1890s depression (get the unemployed out of the big cities, and turn them into peasant farmers), and again the need to cope with the flood of soldiers who returned from WWI.
Elsewhere, marginal land was farmed for wheat.  It was a tough life, hit with drought, depression, dust storms from poor land practices, and mouse plagues.
Here is a vivid account, and one photo of a paddlesteamer which has been identified as PS Colonel.
<www.hcvc.com.au/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1371685644>
My mother grew up in Mallee Victoria in the 1920s: the daughter of a railway stationmaster.
My father's teenage years were spent on a dairy farm near the river town Swan Hill (Vic.).
Their stories of the way of life of that era match this one closely.

Today, Moorook has survived and grown up.  It is a short drive from the major river town Loxton.
Moorook has its own club/pub.  I have eaten there while driving the river, but not while boating.

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

[Harold H. Duncan]

Hi Roderick,
Isn't it the ps Colonel that's being (or was) restored at Murray Bridge, Western bank, just above the rail bridge, in the old slipway. Went down and photographed her 15 or so years ago, and at that stage the owner had just purchased a Marshall (I think) steam engine and boiler for it. Hull was a copy of a Thames barge, timbers over iron frames, and was a bare hull, no deck, and no caulking, but surprisingly solid.
Interesting posts your doing.
Keep it up
cheers
kiwi