Day 10 – Renmark to Echuca –  530km

Starting the day on the deck of the cabin, eating breakfast while watching the flow of the Murray. Not too shabby.

But sitting here doesn’t get the miles done.

Today was about following the Murray eastbound … paddling against the current as we went from South Australia and into Victoria. We would visit the Murray many times today.

We saw a number of Emus today in wheat paddocks and then came across a huge mob of them … maybe over 100. I tried to take video of them all running, but it didn’t come out very well.

Seeing this many emus in one place made me think of the Emu war of the 1930’s in WA where the army tried to cull an estimated mob of 20,000 … but didn’t succeed. (link to the full story)

Passing through all these little towns on the Murray, you realise how reliant they must be for all the produce that is grown in the area. And, the irrigation channel must be huge and seemingly criss-crossing the countryside.

You also see history of agriculture through here and communities who gather and celebrate the history of things like Fordson tractors at Nyall.

 

 

Talking to dad about the shift to tractors on our family farm from horses was a huge deal and completely changed farming.

From old tractors we dipped out toe in a bit of WWII history with stop over at the painted silo at Lake Boga which celebrates the town’s role in WWII and the flying boats.

For those into planes and military history, there is a great museum here.

It’s been a few non-stop travel days, so we are going to spend a couple of nights in Echuca, an old paddlesteamer port and hub for agriculture.

Accommodation – motel – $125

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Day 11 – Echuca rest day

Happy place.

The big thing at Echuca is the old paddlesteamer wharf, built in the late 1800’s to transport grain and wool to Melbourne, which would take around four weeks. Each paddlesteamer was loaded with about 100 tonnes, and then they’d tow one or more barges loaded with over 200 tonnes. At it’s peak the wharf was over 300m in length, and they could be loading multiple paddlesteamers at a time. The wharf operating from 5am to 10pm.

When the railway reached the area, the paddlesteamer industry practically died overnight.

Today, only part of the original wharf remains, and Echuca has embraced its legacy, and it’s great to have a glimpse of this history. 

I knew dad would love this place as he loves all things steam engine related.

We took an hour ride on the P.S.Pevensey (built in 1911), and probably spent half the time just watching the engine with all its exposed parts, powering the big paddles on either side of the boat.

To be honest, we’re both suckers for this type of thing.

 

 

 

As the paddles are fixed drive you need a lot of space to turn them around. So when we turned around on a narrower section of the river the captain did a ‘stem turn’ which is where they drive the bow of the boat into the mud and let the current turn the boat around and back into the current before engage the paddles again. If they were going the other direction, they’d back the rudder into the shore to turn around.

Funny side note: I just sent this video to some of my riding mates with the comment ‘is there anything that duct tape can’t do’ and not 5 minutes of putting this out to the universe a bloke walked passed with a t-shirt that said ‘duct tape can’t fix stupid’.

Accommodation – motel – $125

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Day 12 – Echuca to Canberra – 580km

While today was the final push home, I wanted to show dad a few other painted silos in the area and to drive through Yarrawonga, another Victorian border town dad hasn’t been to. 

And still, there was wheat and bales of hay. For days, we’ve been passing paddocks with bales scattered around, but nothing like this! It looks like these are bales of oats as other paddocks around had oats just cut and swept into windrows ready for baling.

Our last stop for the trip was at Holbrook for a pie and a piece of French vanilla slice … the first for the trip.

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Final comments

With the credits rolling on our own Charlie and Boots movie, without the contrived drama, a couple of final thoughts.

This has been a great opportunity to get out with dad and share some of my favourite places, and discover some new things together. This has been a trip we’ve talked about for many years, but we’ve just never pulled it off.

I’m not sure there is ever a right time for these types of trips, but we are all getting older, and you sure can run out of time.

I’m not sure dad was 100% sure of travelling without a plan, but it worked out well. We were home a day early and we only nearly got caught out once in Ceduna, but everywhere else was fine. I think I may have a convert to this type of travel as dad mentioned that this may be an option post-caravan.

And it made me think about our next stage of travelling … and whether a caravan may be in our future. But that’s a few years away yet as I’ve still got a lot of motorcycle travel to do first.

Dad hates a dirty car

And there’s a rumour going around that I was aiming for all the mud puddles in the car… um er … there may be some truth to that rumour. 

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Trip stats

Dad has been keeping a log of all his trips over the years, so while I write a bit of a blurb and throw in some photos, he has books of milage, fuel, costs, and locations.

A couple of our trip stats…

• Distance travelled — 5,300km
• Fuel used — 504.31ltrs
• Fuel cost — $1,135.95
• Avg fuel consumption — 9.51ltr/100km
• Accommodation — $1,540

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Our Route