Echuca Day 3

We could only get onto the early 10.30 one hour river cruise, but that was fine. At $24 each I thought the price was reasonable. We boarded and departed on time. Our steamer was called Canberra. This one is Pride of the Murray.

The meet, greet and tick off young man tripled as a deckhand and the canteen attendant. The captain steered us upstream for a short distance then quite a distance downstream. The engineer, that is the person who stokes the boiler looks after the propulsion connections was very knowledgeable and I had a long chat with her and although not so old, she knew a lot of steam engines in general, clearly having a great interest in steam. Here is the engine working away. We were travelling slowly at this point. It did reach at least twice that speed. I liked how close you get to the exposed engine. 21 secs.

The paddle wheels each side thrash in the water. The axels from the engine are covered but cross the floor and have to be stepped over. 10 secs.

This steamer on the slipway was a mobile church. You can't see it in the photo but there is a white cross atop the roof.

A second crossing over the Murray River has long been promised and is finally being built.

The wake of a paddle steamer is quite different to a normal wake.

Bushland lines the Victorian side of the river. The bank is constantly eroded and trees fall into the river. In past times they were cleared away but for environmental reasons, they are now left alone unless they are a navigation hazard. This has helped the health of the river immensely and seen fish populations grow. The New South Wales side has more buildings and farmland along the bank.

This boat would be for hire. It looked like an historical village on the NSW river bank, but it is normal housing made to look like old village shops and businesses.

Some private vessels were quite impressive.

Back where we were staying we saw a mother walking her children home from school and onto a houseboat so I guess they live on the boat. There are about four regular paddle steamers operating on the river. Not this one but the most famous and I think the largest is the Emmylou. This is the last steamer built for work on the Murray, the Alexander Arbuthnot.

Back on dry land we had lunch at the bakery chain known as Beechworth Bakeries. While we didn't sit there, at the rear was some nice decking for diners to sit and gaze over the Campaspe River which joins the Murray not too far away.

We thought we might cross into NSW for an evening meal at the RSL Club. G wanted to have a look at it first so across the original bridge we travelled and a few minutes later we stopped and I had forgotten how large the club is. Satisfied we returned and noticed a large illuminated temporary sign on the roadside saying a permit is required to enter Victoria. Oops. There wasn't a checkpoint fortunately. In theory we could have been fined $5000 each and be made to quarantine for fourteen days. I checked later and it takes five minutes on your phone to fill in the form and approval is almost instant. Later someone told us the checkpoint is set up in the evening, so we were afraid of long queues and decided we would stay on the Victorian side for dinner.

Then it was to the very good Echuca Discovery Centre.

Poor lighting but this diorama was excellent.

The bones of the perhaps misnamed Success.

While you may assume the state border is the middle of the river, it is not. The Murray River is in New South Wales with the riverbank on the Victorian side being the border. A fleeing criminal being pursued by police could jump into the river and the police would have to apply for an extradition warrant to capture him. Although the river is NSW, Victorians are exempt from COVID regulations so far as being on the river.

These two are of the Emmylou, the latter taken from the discovery centre.

What I really wanted to see.

Here it is operating very quietly. The engineer was tucked near the boiler having his lunch. 22 secs.

We were weary by then so back to the park for a rest and refreshing, then out to dinner at the pleasant enough Star Hotel. We sat outside at the rear and had our meal as we swatted at pesky flies and once more the corellas swooped around in massive flocks making a racket.