6th April 2013
If you read my first post you may be
wondering how we survived the night where the crim was supposed to be camped.
Fortunately he didn’t turn up during the night but that didn’t really help with
our sleeping arrangements. For most of the night it was very dark with little
moon poking though the trees until early hours of the morning so you couldn’t
see the crims tent even if you wanted to. However Nancy was very vigilant and
checked for any arrival of a stolen blue car many times during that long
night and because she couldn’t see in the dark she would wake me and ask if I
could see anything. Fortunately I didn’t lay in bed worrying and fell into good
sleep fairly quickly each time. I didn’t even hear the chap in an old motor
home leave about 2:00am.
In the morning while preparing the car and
rig for our continuing journey I asked the ladies in the neighbouring camper
trailer how they had slept and I got the impression they were much like Nancy
and heard every little noise during the night, they also heard the motor home
leave early in the morning, which we all thought a bit strange. How the mind
conjures up scenarios.
“Strange
looking bloke with dog sits next to old truck style motorhome constantly
watching our end of the campsite. Enter police looking for crim, check inside tent
next to us and talk to strange man with motor home. Police depart, motorhome
man immediately gets on mobile phone. Crim doesn’t turn up during night, motor
home departs in wee hours.
Question:
Was the motorhome man a fence, contacted the crim and told him not to come back
and arranged to meet him somewhere to collect the ill gotten gains in the wee
hours.
Sound far fetched? You would be surprised
how many of us thought exactly that scenario independent of one another.
Through Wangaratta our journey took us
further into Kelly country, we made a brief stop at Glenrowan just to say we
had been there and then spent a considerable amount of time aimlessly driving
around the countryside (while towing a large caravan) looking for Ellen Kelly’s
grave. Ellen must have been a bit of a hot pants, she was the 4th of
eleven kids herself and ended up having at least 12 kids of her own to several
different blokes and in each case she was either not married or was pregnant
when she did. (we never did find the grave)
Eventually after travelling through centres
of Benalla and Shepparton we arrived at the old Murray River port of Echuca,
where we camped for a couple of days on a bend overlooking the river about 8
kls out of town.
Around 1870 Echuca was considered to be the
largest and busiest inland port in Australia. Bullock drays had previously
lugged goods from Melbourne to local sheep stations and subsequently wool bales
back. Apparently it was not only an extremely long and expensive process but it
also meant that fragile goods including glass for windows couldn’t be carted on
the rough bullock wagons and wool clips were limited to the dray capacities and
numbers. Over time steam paddle wheelers made their way upstream and made
transport not only faster but far more cost effective. Fragile goods were
available and with the introduction of steam and machinery into woolshed
shearing for example, the woolclips were able to increase in size as well. So
it evolved that Echuca ended up being the busiest and largest port with a huge
number of paddle wheelers carrying cargo and people or towing barges with cargo
and timber. Today there are several old working paddle wheelers operating
around Echuca but nowdays carrying tourists and a major section of the original
massive wharf that existed has been rebuilt to its original design with red gum
timber which apparently doesn’t rot in
water.
Just upstream of the Echuca Port complex is
an old bridge built in about 1870 (not hundred percent sure of the exact date)
this old bridge built of what I would presume is malleable iron (similar to
steel) is hot riveted not bolted, it was originally built as a railway bridge
but nowdays is the only means of getting across to Moama on the NSW side of the
Murray, one lane either way it becomes quite a bottleneck in an incident, but
all credit to those early designers and builders as these days all sorts of
traffic travel over it, cars, trucks, buses B-doubles to name a few.
We spent best part of a day in and around
the old port and Echuca itself, including a 45 minute trip on the wood fired
steam paddle wheeler Pevensey. Interestingly the old steamer was named after a
large sheep station in the area at the time. But I remember a different
Pevensey, when I was a kid living in Sussex on the English Channel, there was a
small village not far away at a place called Pevensey Bay where there were ruins
of a large castle naturally called Pevensey Castle, probably from the Saxon
era.
Sitting on cushioned wool bales in beautiful
sunshine with the methodical rythum of paddle wheels and rythmic chugging and
clunking of the old steam engine, I found myself tapping a foot in time to the
beat and noticed others doing similar, I reckon you could easily knock out a
tune. These old paddle wheelers have a massive barn door rudder that is linked
to the small bridge or better known as wheel house, by chains where the skipper
steers the thing with a monstrous ships wheel. Before we arrived back at the
wharf the skipper announced that all the kids on board could go up to the wheel
house and have their photo taken steering the boat, I was very tempted.
What a revelation it must have been for
those early pioneers when steam arrived to replace the rugged hardship of
bullock dray days.
We spent another peaceful night at the same
campsite overlooking the Murray, the people in the nearest caravan were from
Mackay in Qld, basically slowly on their way back home.
6th April
By the time we got into town and topped up
with water then across to NSW to a golf course where there was a public toilet
dump for caravans and motor homes, time was marching on, fortunately the roads
in this region are good and also flat being what they call the Murray River
Valley and that is a misnomer, there are no hills to make it a valley and
really they are river plains. Anyway we put some kilometres on the clock
passing through border towns on the Murray such as Swan Hill where we stopped for
lunch and fuel. Turning left at the little town of Piangil we left the Murray
area to travel west down the Mallee Highway eventually stopping for the night
at a nice roadside rest area in the middle of a little town called Underbool,
two shops, one pub and a police station with no one in it. Very little traffic
on this road so we had a quiet night hot showers and toilets and on power for
$10 in a honesty box not bad. The journey through from Echuca took us through
areas of grain growing as far as the eye could see or fruit growing as far as
the eye could see, grapes, apple and pear and stone fruit. I noticed also in
some concentrated areas where people were cultivating prickly pear for the
fruit.
7th April
Today we should cross into South Australia.
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