Echuca; Australia's Paddlesteamer town

If you’ve heard of Echuca, you may know it as the place where All the Rivers Run, thanks to the television mini-series of that name that was shot here in the 1980’s. Basically a romance, but set in the 19th century heyday of river-trading and outback-taming, the miniseries brought Echuca its fifteen minutes of fame on the world stage, with even the censors of communist-controlled Warsaw-pact countries deeming it fit to be screened. During filming, the miniseries changed the face of Echuca, provided some good free entertainment to local school children (of which I was one), and part-time work as extras for many Echuca residents. My Uncle Matt was one such extra and in one scene you could see him wearing a top hat and described as a "better class of gentleman" And if you knew my Uncle Matt, you’d probably think that was pretty funny.

Or you might know Echuca as Australia’s Paddlesteamer Capital, the moniker adopted by the local tourism authorities to promote the fact that the world’s largest fleet of working riverboats ties up here. The fleet originally carried resources like wool and timber to the wharf at Echuca, where it could be transferred to land and carried by rail to the colonial capital, Melbourne, and thus to port and the wider world. These days the fleet, including the oldest wooden-hulled paddlesteamer on any river in the world, (P.S. Adelaide), carries tourists on round trips ranging in length from one hour to three days.

Maybe the first thought to come to mind when you hear ‘Echuca’ will be as the place where the mighty Murray River comes closest to Melbourne. It’s a popular weekend escape for city-dwellers, especially those interested in water sports or fishing.

However people hear about it, most visits to Echuca are in some way connected to the water courses after which the town is named, in the indigenous Yorta-Yorta language, for the "meeting-place of the waters". Whether you’re interested in the history surrounding the massive redgum wharf and paddlesteamer trade, or the more active pursuits of fishing, waterskiing or swimming, you’ll probably find yourself spending a good deal of your time on, in, or beside the mighty Murray River, or one of it’s smaller tributaries, the Campaspe or Goulburn.

And a very pleasant time it’s bound to be, too.

Quick Tips:

Best Way To Get Around:

Echuca is on the Victorian side of the Murray River, 205 kilometres/128miles due north of the state capital city, Melbourne. The B75 Northern Highway branches off to the left of the Hume Highway just north of Melbourne, and following it will take you the entire way to Echuca.

The town of Heathcote, is approximately the halfway point of the trip and makes a good spot to stop for a break. There are several cafes on the main street and public toilets near the football oval, which is clearly visible on your right as you head north through town. If you’d like to have a full-on bang-up picnic at Heathcote, follow the signs to the Pink Cliffs reserve, which is a starkly beautiful landscape of eroded mullock heaps, left over from the area’s 19th century gold rush.

V-line (the state transport company) and McCaffertys (Greyhound) buses make the trip from Melbourne to Echuca (and back) several times each day. Expect to pay around .00 for the adult fare (2006). You can also travel by train from Melbourne to Bendigo and complete your trip on the Bendigo-Echuca bus.

Echuca is also on the B400 Murray Valley Highway which follows, you guessed it, the valley of the Murray River. If you’ve been in Adelaide, Mildura, or Swan Hill, you’ll approach on the M.V.Highway from the west and from Albury, Canberra or Sydney, you’ll be on the same road from the east.

The highways are often straight and wide, but police speed control methods are among the most sophisticated in the world and you can not expect to be shown any lenience if caught exceeding the speed limit. The highway speed limit is 100 kilometres per hour (about 55mph) and within towns it’s 50kph unless otherwise indicated.

The Beechworth bakery is the best place in Echuca to take a break from a day’s sightseeing. Everything from tea, coffee, and snacks, to entire meals are available and the setting is tremendous.

It’s difficult to miss the bakery building. It’s one of the very few three storey buildings on High street and its distinctive vintage delivery vehicle is almost always parked out in front. The red brick building was renovated when the bakery moved in over a decade ago, on of the most notable additions being the deep balcony and verandah that surround the building on three sides. The best of the views offered by the upstairs balcony are at the rear of the bakery over a sweeping bend in the Campaspe river and across to the native bushland on the opposite bank. The balcony also has the advantage of catching the afternoon breezes, but on a really hot day you might still be more comfortable in the airconditioned interior.

While the bakery is perhaps not the cheapest place in Echuca, it probably offers the best value in the historic end of town. Focaccias are around the $7 mark, breakfast pastries and sandwiches range from $2.80 to $5.50 and coffee starts at $2.80 for the bottomless filter coffee up to $4.50 for more specialized brews. There’s a wide, wide range of cakes and slices. I can personally vouch for the apple scrolls ($1.70-lots of fruit very moist), the canadian date slice ($2.95 beautifully moist, tasty and healthy), and the caramel slice ($2.95, delicious and wickedly sweet), and next time I go, I’m going to have a snickerdoodle, which appears to be a shortbread base about the size of a cupcake filled with fresh raspberries. Mmmmm!

If it’s lunch you’re after, a pre-made salad roll or one of the many of flavoured pies should sate your appetite. The pies are the Australian-style pies, about as round as a hamburger and about as high as a thick sandwich, with a range of fillings such as steak and mushroom; beef, bacon and potato; or chicken and broccoli. For the traditional pie experience, any pie containing beef should, upon removal from its brown paper bag, be liberally smothered in tomato sauce (ketchup), and consumed immediately, with a slight forward lean of the upper body to avoid the dripping of sauce on one’s clothes. (Australian children have learnt this forward lean at an early age, ever since British migrants of the early 1900s discovered the climate was unsuitable for neckties as part of school uniform. Working class children mastered the technique quickly, but students from private schools found it more difficult not to spill sauce on themselves and were forced to retain the neckties for longer, in some cases until the present day. ).

Beechworth bakery is very highly recommended.

There’s something special about the Paddlesteamer Emmylou. It’s not as old as the Adelaide or as famous as the Pevensey(Philadelphia), and it doesn’t have the working pedigree of some of the old steamers, but for a lot of visitors to Echuca (and locals), it’s the most beautiful boat on the water.

It’s a handsomely proportioned paddlesteamer and is the only one on the river at Echuca with three decks. The lower deck is similar to the other steamers; there’s an opening through which you can watch the 1906 Marshall steam engine hard at work, cabins front and rear and open decks with passenger seating. The deck immediately above has more open seating for passengers and the cosy cabins that are used as accommodation on the overnight trips. Where the captain’s wheelhouse would be on the other boats is a lovely open-fronted cabin for passengers, which is the pick of the places from which to watch the river go by. The chairs are comfortable, there are photos and information from the history of the boat and you’re out of the sun, which can be quite intense even without the reflection from the surface of the river. Of course it’s nice to roam around the boat and explore it from different angles, but for anybody who doesn’t fancy tackling the steep staircases while the boat is in motion, or is a little limited in their mobility (I was hobbling around on crutches last time I was on the Emmy), the front cabin is the place to be. You’re also right below the captain’s wheelhouse on the third and highest deck, so if you play your cards right, you might be invited for a turn at the steering-wheel!

The Emmylou cruises every day of the week, beginning with 60 and 90 minute trips and finishing with three-hour dinner cruises in the evening. The short trips are around $20 for adults and about half that for children aged 15 or younger. Refreshments and light lunches are also available on the daytime cruises. The short cruises leave from Riverboat Dock and head upstream past the redgum wharf. Before the iron bridge the captain cajoles the 30metre length of the Emmylou around to travel, with the current, back past the dock, the houseboat moorings and Victoria Park (native forest) almost to the junction of the Murray and Campaspe rivers. The cruises are accompanied by an interesting and entertaining commentary from the captain. You’ll hear the legends and history of the port and paddleboat trade as the Emmylou passes the wharf and restoration dock, and then on the downstream leg, you’ll be left free to form your own impressions and appreciate the rhythm of the paddlewheels pushing you in and out of the shadows cast by the huge old eucalyptus that line each side of the river.

If you have time for only one thing in Echuca, you shouldn’t miss a ride on the Emmylou.

The Museum of the Echuca Historical Society is appropriately housed in the historic building under the huge fig tree on the corner of Warren and Dickson streets, across from Hopwood Gardens, Bridge Hotel and Riverboat Dock. The building dates from the 1860s and was formerly the Echuca Police station.

The museum is open 7 days a week, from 11am to 3pm. Upon paying the modest $3 admittance, you’ll enter the first of the display rooms, with aboriginal history and artifacts including a brass breast-plate inscribed "Chief of Echuca" belonging to "Chief" Billy Tool. Apparently these breast plates were bestowed by early white settlers sometimes in the genuine spirit of recognition and sometimes as a cynical attempt to exploit the traditional owners of the land. The first room also contains handtools, photographs and newspaper articles from the sawmilling, paddlesteaming, pioneering years. Some of the more interesting articles talk about paddlesteamers that have caught fire or sunk, and eloquently illustrate the hardships of life in inland Australia in the 1800s. One poem talked about a flood that was;

"ten fathom deep from the bed t’ the crest,
at Echuca, she’s ninety mile wide.
She filled Riverina from east to the west
and then she poured over the side."

Framed photographs of Echuca’s local government and gold leaf honour rolls of various organizations (from an obviously more comfortable and civilized era) crowd the hallway, while the two end rooms are dedicated more to the life of ordinary people. In one there are simple but beautiful gowns and waistcoats in glass cases, antique sewing machines and framed sepias of unsmiling people in their best Sunday clothes. In the second there are all manner of kitchen implements; beaters, whisks, pasta-cutters and strange contraptions of wooden-handled cast-iron whose purpose I could only guess at.

Out in the backyard though, lies the real treasure of the Echuca Historical Society Museum. Imagine distant relatives of your grandparents’ age who’ve lived on a farm in the area all their lives and liked to collect things, and that’s what it’s like behind the museum. There are old washing machines with crank handles, cases full of hand-lettered tobacco tins, every piece of farm machinery that’s ever been pulled by a horse, a timber slab hut that was once used a medical clinic relocated from the floodplains west of Echuca, and the crowning glory-an outside toilet on a precarious lean that suggests it’s next visitor might be the last. And like all good Australian backyards, this one has sheds. Sheds full of horse-drawn wagons and buggies, steam engines, parts of steam engines, sawmillers’ circular blades as tall as a not-so-small child, and even the partially-burnt rudder from the P.S.Murrumbidgee, built at Echuca in 1865 and destroyed by fire in 1948.

Tourists flock to the Victorian goldfields to search for glistening nuggets, but when you’ve been through Echuca and this museum; you’ll know that treasure can also be covered in rust, dust and cracked enamel.

Part museum, part railway station and part working wharf, entry to the Port of Echuca is by the ticket-booth where the old steam engine and elevated footbridge are visible behind the tall picket fence. The best value is with a combined ticket. The adult price for a cruise is $18.50, and entry to the port is $11.50, but the combined ticket for both is $24, (a $6/20% saving). There are further discounts for seniors, children and families. Cruises run at set times through the day; the first at 10:15am and the last at 3:45pm, but it doesn’t matter what time you arrive, as you can explore the port and its displays at your own pace until your cruise is ready to depart, and catch up with anything you missed when your cruise returns.

The first building you’ll come to inside is the small railway station; only a few feet wide, but with space enough for the stationmaster’s desk and equipment, yellowed old timetables, and a small display about the filming of All the Rivers Run.

You’ll then walk around the end of the railway line, where vintage engines and carriages are loaded with historic farm equipment. Over the tracks is the wooden cargo shed, which houses most of the indoor displays, including a ten-minute audio-visual presentation, a diorama of the port in the 1880s, ropes as thick as a man’s arm, and the PHILADELPHIA sign that the Pevensey wore during her short but brilliant film career.

You can easily spend an hour going through the exhibits in the cargo shed, but if the steam whistle calls you for your cruise, you can enter and exit as many times as you like.

The external parts of the port that are included in your entry ticket are the Sawmills and the Star Hotel. The Sawmills are accessible along the boardwalk to the north of the wharf and display steam-powered machinery and wood-milling techniques. The Star Hotel has reopened as a hotel and is not a bad place for a drink, but the main reason to call in is to see the secret underground bar and escape tunnel.

Visiting the port for the first time since childhood, the most interesting things to me were;
• The redgum wharf today is around 75m long, but at its peak in the 1880s it was 332m; (almost a quarter of a mile for you imperial folks).
• There were once 79 hotels in Echuca, including the Cricketers’ Arms, the Builders’ Arms and the Horse and Jockey. (Echuca had around 4,000 residents at the time and today its 15,000 residents make do with only 12 pubs).
• The steamers use around 1 ton of wood/hour when loaded and when unloaded can scrape through shallows of as little as two feet deep, which is quite amazing when you consider that they are over 100 feet long, 20 feet wide, and weigh more than 100 tons.
• The panoramic view from the top of the wharf.

The Paddlesteamer Pevensey is a grand old lady of the river and the most famous of the paddlesteamers at Echuca, largely because of her starring role in All the Rivers Run.

She was built across the river from Echuca’s Riverboat Dock at the Moama slipway by the Permewan Wright Company in 1911, and named after Pevensey Station on the Murrumbidgee River, from where she was to cart wool back to Echuca. 1932 was a momentous year in the Pevensey’s history. The highlight was the transport of a barge with a record load of 2000 bales of wool and the low point was undoubtedly the day she caught fire. She was rebuilt, but never recaptured the glory of her heyday and later became a floating but stationary museum at Mildura. After a three-year (1973-76) restoration by Port of Echuca shipwrights, the Pevensey was refloated and began carrying passengers.

Boarding is from the redgum wharf. When the steam-whistle screeches, it’s time to make your way down the wooden staircase to whichever level of the wharf is being used (depending on the height of the river at the time). After walking the plank with the assistance of the deckhands, you’re onboard and free to explore bow to stern, inside and out and on the main deck or up the steep ladders and around the captains’ wheelhouse. The best views of course are from the upper deck, but the most comfortable seating is on one of the big bales of wool down on the cargo level. You can also inspect the workings of the steam engine as it burns through more than one ton of wood during the hour-long round trip.

The route for the trip was much the same as the one the Emmylou followed. We took off upstream, inspecting the redgum wharf before steaming past the wet-dock area where the P.S.Hero is undergoing restoration, and turning around in the wide bend just before the magnificent Iron Bridge that connects Victoria with New South Wales. Then it’s downstream with the current (at up to 5miles per hour), past Riverboat dock and the native bushland of Victoria Park, as far as Morrisons’ Winery. We turned around there and, after a blast of steam through the whistle at some errant houseboaters (motoring up the wrong side of the river) and a close brush with some overhanging branches, headed upstream back to port.

The Pevensey’s second experience with fire was in the 1980’s at the hands of film technicians. Despite the assurances of the special effects crew that the Pevensey would be undamaged, local councillors and steam enthusiasts debated long and hard about whether to allow the scene to be filmed. Everybody knows the mayor breathed a sigh of relief, but some people think they also heard a faint puff from the Pevensey’s whistle when she came through the ordeal unscathed.

As you will probably be spending a good portion of your time in Echuca close to one of the rivers in some way, it’s worth paying attention to some of the huge trees that line the banks and flood plains alongside. The native forest around Echuca is a mixture of two main types of trees, the grey box and the river red gum. The easiest way to tell them apart is by the bark. The grey box has a rough grey brown bark, sometimes with an almost hairy texture, while the river red gum (eucalyptus camuldensis) has a smooth, multi-coloured bark, with the outer layers splitting and peeling to reveal different colours and create sometimes quite beautiful patterns. The river red gum has the unfortunate habit of dropping huge branches without warning. People will tell you that branches drop on windy days, or on hot days after long periods of no rain, or from trees that show signs of borer or termite infestation, but the truth is than not even the most experienced bushman can tell you for sure when a branch will or won’t drop.

That’s not to say though, that you should stay out of the forests or away from the rivers. Only a handful of people across Australia each year are injured or lose their lives to accidents involving falling limbs, so the chances of injury are perhaps comparable to being struck by lightning. If you have the choice, though, it’s better not to park your car beside older trees, and you should never sleep in a tent within range of a potential branch-dropper (in the same way that you wouldn’t continue a game of golf in an electrical storm).

Despite the fact that Australia has seven of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, your chances of coming across one of them around Echuca is slim. The three poisonous snakes in the local area are the tiger snake, brown snake and red-bellied black snake. The red-bellied black is extremely timid and farmers have even been known to encourage them to stay, as they are territorial and will discourage other snakes from taking up residence. Tiger and brown snakes are more aggressive, and the brown snake is the most commonly sighted of the three. Children here are always taught not to play in long grass or around piles of timber or other material that could harbour snakes, and that’s good advice for everybody to follow. Collecting firewood from state forests is by permit only, and buying it in town before your camping or houseboat trip will also help you avoid the possibility of disturbing reptile habitat. While bushwalking, keep to open paths and tread heavily or make noise to give sunbathing snakes a warning and a chance to get out of your way. All of these snakes poison the blood rather than the nerves, so a victim has several hours to seek medical assistance.

The other poisonous critter in the area is the redback spider, and these are quite common around older houses, especially in piles of firewood or garden refuse. They are slow moving and timid, and rarely leave their web area to wander. Bites will cause irritation but are rarely fatal.
Mosquitoes are very common in the warmer months, and are most active around dusk. Barmah Forest virus and Ross River fever can both be transmitted by mosquito bite, but neither is fatal, nor especially common. Avoiding mosquito bites altogether is the best protection; long-sleeved shirts, trousers, repellent and staying indoors around dusk are all effective.

Swimmers should NEVER, EVER DIVE into the Murray or any of the other rivers in the area. The above-mentioned river red gums can drop branches or collapse completely into the rivers, where they can become invisible when submerged in the sandy waters. Particularly in the Murray River, currents are strong and submerged logs can move without any indication above the water surface, especially after a period of heavy rain. Walk into the water slowly and preferably after asking somebody with knowledge of the area for a suggested place to swim. If you find yourself caught in a strong current, don’t try to swim against it; swim at right angles to it towards the bank and walk back to your sandbar or houseboat on dry land.

The Murray is Australia’s greatest river. Rising high in the Australian Alps, it meanders 2,575km (1,600 miles) through three of Australia’s six states on its journey to the sea at Goolwa, South Australia.

The Murray river’s significance to the traditional owners of the land is well-recognised, and the many middens, graves and sacred sites along the banks bear further proof. The river was also immensely important to early European inhabitants. From the early 1800s when explorers Hume and Hovell named it Hume and a few years later when Charles Sturt renamed it (not realizing it was the same river), the Murray was a main artery of inland exploration and settlement. Today, the Murray wetlands are an important ecosystem and are home to native wildlife including platypus, crayfish, Murray short-necked turtles and at least a dozen varieties of fish, and the Barmah forest and lakes (30km north of Echuca) seem likely to become Australia’s next national park.

But, to understand more about the river, why not immerse yourself in it, literally?

The obvious place for a swim is the sandbar between the Iron Bridge and the Redgum Wharf. The sandbar is visible from the bridge, but by road, you have to travel right into Moama and take the first left to find the signs to Moama Beach. If you’re crossing the bridge from Echuca on foot, you’ll be able to hop the guardrail and scramble (carefully!) down the slope to shortcut through the bush, saving yourself at least 20-minute walk.

Moama Beach is the most popular swimming spot in town, and can get quite crowded. Fortunately, it’s quite a long sandbar and boats are not permitted to tie up there, so the whole area is available to swimmers. The river bottom slopes gently at the wharf end but is steeper near the bridge. You might see people swimming out to passing houseboats and paddlesteamers or jumping from the bridge pylons, but both activities are risky and best left to local teenagers with more testosterone than common sense.

Tannery bend is several bends upstream of the iron bridge and is accessible from Echuca East via the middle track through the Banyula state forest. The bend is named for the leatherworks that once stood there, but is more commonly known as Chinaman’s bend. That name refers to the Chinese market gardeners who once lived and worked on the adjacent floodplains, and is not meant to be derogatory to anybody in any way. The bend is sandy both above and below the waterline, is shaded from the afternoon sun and is in a speed-restriction zone for motorboats, so it’s an ideal place for parents to bring children for a refreshing splash. The next bend upstream, Bowers’ Bend, is now silted up and covered with reeds, but was once the location for the Echuca swimming club and generations of local residents (including my grandfather) learnt to swim there.

My favourite place to swim is The Point, the first bend downstream of the Campaspe junction. There are no signs showing the way, but if you turn from Warren street to the right past the cemetery and then follow the Campaspe river downstream until it joins the Murray, you’re almost there. The river banks at The Point are covered in a mat of exposed tree roots and sometimes also with rubbish left by inconsiderate houseboaters, but the river floor is beautifully sandy and slopes so gently that you can walk out about 20m in places and still not be out of your depth. If there are no houseboats tied up and you go late enough in the day for the waterskiers to have packed up and gone home, it’s a wonderful, tranquil place where the setting sun reflects in the water and the lawnmowers and televisions of the town are far away.