MURRAY BRIDGE
It is South Australia's biggest river town and it almost didn't happen. But then it gained the Bridge that built it, and then another, and became the rural and river city of Murray Bridge. About 80 kilometres, or just under an hour on the South-Eastern Freeway from Adelaide the mighty Murray dominates its past and beautifies its present.
The Ngaralta aboriginal clan saw Captain Charles Sturt and his whaleboat crew camp on what's now the Sturt Reserve in February 1830. In less than a decade, the first colonists were camped by the Torrens River, and overlanders had forded a mob of cattle across the Murray about here. As the first white family built on the bank, it became known as Edwards' Crossing. There was a lot of argy bargy before it got the bridge that gave it a new name.
Visitors to this town of thirteen thousand people head for Sturt Reserve and Bertha the Bunyip. Further along the river, above the first bridge, the town's first stone building has been restored. The "round house" (it's actually multi-sided) was built in 1874 for the bridge construction engineer. The town has its share of interesting heritage and a walking tour brochure to match. In Bridge Street, there's a nice feel of a place that was a major river port and rail workshops centre. The town hall is early twentieth century, but the railway station greeted its first Melbourne Express when the line first crossed the river in 1886.
The Postcards crew took a short cruise on the MV Barrangul for afternoon coffee and a sense of the river traffic. Today, it's almost all houseboats and leisure craft, but 120 years ago this was a major port to rival the Mississippi's. A hundred paddlesteamers and two hundred barges plied the Murray and a lot of them called at the old wharf. Surviving until half way through the twentieth century, the milkboats called at two butter factories on the shore. The dairy industry lives on, with flood levees protecting the river flats and thousands of dairy cattle, and there is a modern export cheese factory up in the town.
Coming under the road and railway bridges, they're spectacular engineering feats from their underside, we watched rowing crews train down towards Long Island. They perpetuate a grand tradition, because Murray Bridge once provided an Olympic rowing team. Participating in the 1924 Paris Games, they proudly called themselves "The Cods".
Our Postcards tour concluded with the tale of how the town nearly wasn't! In the 1860's a parliamentary committee juggled rival claims for the first river bridge, and the Edward's Crossing won the day, because is scored a quote half that of Wellington. The key eventually was the rail link to Murray Bridge and beyond to Melbourne, and the bridge was constructed to take trains and horses and carts. A second bridge took the rail traffic from 1925.
And what of the tale of a bridge-labourer's death, during the six years construction of the first bridge? Did he fall to become entombed in a pylon during an unstoppable concrete pour? The old-timers will tell you it happened, but the local historians reckon one worker did die, but he's buried in the Callington cemetery.
The district now has a third bridge. The Swanport Bridge takes Highway One traffic away from the town. There are attractive reasons, however, to come in and collect the walk and tour guides at the Visitor Centre. They get you round the town, and inevitably lead you to the river, the wharf, the reserve and, of course, the steel crossings that created Murray Bridge.
Postcards previously visited Murray Bridge.
Details:
Murray Bridge Visitor Centre
For more information visit the Rural City of Murray Bridge web site at www.rcmb.sa.gov.au or contact the visitor information centre on Ph: (08) 8532 6660, Fax: (08) 8532 5288 or email MBVC@rcmb.sa.gov.auMV Barrangul
Cruise details and bookings phone: 0407-395-385
MV Princess Andrea
Cruise details and bookings phone: 8531 0566 or 0408 839 539
