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| The 'Murray Mouth,' South Australia... |
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| The Coorong is dead ahead, across the last kilometer of the 'Mighty Murray' |
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| The Murray River mouth must be constantly dredged to keep it open. |
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| At the tip of Hindmarsh Island, you're just one sand bank away from the Southern Ocean... |
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| YOU ARE HERE: courtesy of Ma Google, I can show you exactly where you are on the globe! |
From
Goolwa, drive over the great swooping road bridge which will take you across the channel to Hindmarsh Island ... then follow your nose (and the signage!) to the very tip of the island. Keep going till you literally run out of road -- and there is the "Murray Mouth," the outfall of a great river that had its beginning a long,
long way away:
The River Murray rises near Mount Kosciuszko in the Australian Alps and flows 2,530 km to the Southern Ocean, near Goolwa in South Australia. This snapshot covers the upper part of the Murray catchment from the river's headwaters to Lake Mulwala, near Yarrawonga. [source]
As rivers around the world go, the Murray -- which Aussies call "Mighty" is not so wide or deep or long; but the Murray-Diamantina River system is the biggest on this continent, and several states depend on it for ... everything. As the saying goes, "Water is Life." Though it's obviously outdone by the Mississippi, the Yangtze, the Amazon, the Congo, the Ganges,
the Murray River is pretty impressive in its own right, especially when you remember that it runs through the driest states on the driest continent, which those other rivers do
not. That link, right above, will take you to the Wikipedia page, with all you'd ever need to know in a nutshell. The map right here will get you there -- view it at full size to actually see it.
But -- facts and figures aside -- most of what you'll remember of the Murray Mouth is vast skies, overwhelming emptiness, silence broken only by the crash of wild surf (when it's up) and the cries of seabirds. You'll see silver gulls, terns, pelicans, herons, and numerous birds of prey hunting over the dunes...
At the end of the road which spans Hindmarsh Island, you'll find easy parking in a wide, surfaced carpark (or parking lot, for our US cousins ... or car park, two words, for those who prefer it that way!) just inland of the dunes. Be prepared for
hugeness, quiet -- and it can be very cold indeed in winter. It's almost always windy, and the Southern Ocean is just on the other side of that sandbar you see on the horizon, where pelicans nest.
Yet signs of human habitation are all around --
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| The dredge, without which the Murray would silt itself up completely and Lake Alexandrina would flood. |
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| Believe it or not, people live here, right on the beach! |
Yes, people live at Murray Mouth -- imagine living in this world of sky and water, seabirds and the wind. Sounds a lot like
Storm Boy (which has just been remade in 2018, incidentally).
The managed ecosystem and history are actually very interesting, and you don't need coverage for your mobile to research it on the fly. The info-boards are to your right before you tromp onto the sand, and they're highly informative. I've uploaded these shots, below, at 2000 pixels wide, which makes them entirely readable:
