All Posts in Order: Riverlands 2014, it's a wrap.

PS Captain Proud

Part One:

Murray Bridge, The PS Captain Proud and the river

Take the Southeastern Freeway, headed for a lunch date on a real, genuine paddle wheel riverboat. Pelicans, water skiers, wide skies ... and some very good food!

Dawn at Blanchetown

Part Two:

Murray Bridge to Blanchetown

Mannum, Len Kroehn's Lookout, houseboats and swamp hens in the wetlands at Blanchetown ... kookaburras in the pink of the dawn, and hit the road early.

Murray River at Morgan

Part Three:

Pelican Point, Broken Cliffs and Morgan

Some truly spectacular erosion, a six-foot pelican, a drive on the ferry across the river ... bacon and eggs, white faced herons, and -- did we just run out of road?

Overland Corner Hotel

Part Four:

The food basket of South Aus ... the proverbial "pub in the scrub"

The richest farm country imaginable -- it's orchards and vineyards wherever you look; wetlands being rescued, and ... step back in time to 1859 at the Overland Corner, a hotel, in the wilderness!

Banrock Station

Part Five:

Banrock Station winery and wetlands, and waterbirds at Murray River Lock 3

Lock gates, pelicans and egrets ... Banrock Station -- a world famous winery and ecology project. Lake Bonney, and Berri... 

The Big Ram, Karoonda

Part Six:

Wine by the truckload, the world's biggest sheep, and one amazing sunset

Shades of green at Loxton, wheat to the horizon in the Murray Mallee, the biggest sheep imaginable at Karoonda, and a sunset made to order on the Southeastern Freeway for home.  

Riverlands 2014, Part Three: Pelican Point, Broken Cliffs and Morgan

This is where we're headed: the River Murray in South Australia...

The trusty Mitsubishi Magna "Lola" takes a breather between Blanchetown and Morgan,
under a spectacular morning sky that, uh, bodes ill for the weather late this afternoon!

Getting close to the deep-water channels where the riverboats ply...

Dave, the intrepid explorer, under those spectacular skies ... "god rays" and all.

Houseboats moored in idyllic conditions on the Murray River at Pelican Point.

Imagine waking at dawn to the sounds of birds  on the river, in one of those houseboats! One of these days...

Pelican Point ... and here's the pelican to prove it!

A place called "Broken Cliffs" ... for obvious reasons. Picturesque scenery -- quite the photo op --

-- a great opportunity to use your telephoto option --

-- and Broken Cliffs is right off the side of the road there, just a short distance from Morgan.

Welcome to the historic river port of Morgan ... and breakfast is on our minds by now. Urgently!

To get to Morgan, you have to cross the Murray River. A bridge? Don't be silly.
It's much better than that. We do love these drive-on, drive-off cable ferries!

...drive off again, and you can glimpse Morgan itself right at the top of the slope here.

The Landseer building in Morgan is a cultural museum now, but the signage tells all:
back in the golden age of the paddle steamers, A.H. Landseer Ltd. was a logistics company,
working the river and lakes. There's a Landseer building in Milang, too. 

You're kidding ... the Bank of Adelaide was a cottage?! Yep.

Morgan has a gorgeous view of the river, and whaddaya know? Riverboats.
Looks like more people live on the river than on the bank. Many of these will be tourists, like us.

 Breakfast at last! The Morgan Riverview Cafe -- very good bacon and egg rolls ...
though we could have chosen fish-'n-chips or meat pies. For brekkie. Thanks -- we'll take the bacon and eggs!

A stroll after breakfast took us the old wharf and disused railway station... 

A white faced heron was drying off in a riverside tree, after catching his own breakfast.

Back across on the ferry, we hunted down a photo-op spot, to get pretty shots of the river and cliffs...

Then it's back on the road. Uh, dirt track? Did we just run out of road?

You rejoin the bitumen a few kilometers away, under skies that have begun to brood, and
we'll be in Waikerie before lunch!

Exploring places you never visited before is always a lot of run, and this trip took us almost out of the state, in a region known as the Riverlands.

The Murray River is life's blood to South Australia, but it actually rises in the Australian Alps in NSW and Vic; and some of the most spectacular stretches are in fact over the state line. Well, we'll get there one day -- and the best way to do that is on a riverboat cruise out of Renmark. Save all of that for another trip, because there was so much to do on this one.

From Blanchetown (see the previous post) in the early morning we followed the river north to Morgan, where we stopped from breakfast. Rural cafe food can be overwhelming: you can score fish and chips, meat pies, sausage rolls, deep-fried anything, at 7:00am. Luckily, most places also do a very neat line in bacon and eggs, in some form.

Suitably refueled, we took a stroll, discovered a little about the rich history of the area. Then the river heads east and southeast, curving back on itself, and it's impossible to get lost. The road follows the river, and you follow the road.

From Morgan, it's onward into the richest agricultural country either of us has ever seen on any continent ... places like Waikerie, Cadel, Berri, Loxton ... and some surprises: the proverbial "pub in the scrub," and a lock on the river, and the world-famous Banrock Station, and "the Big Ram," and at last, one of the most amazing sunsets we've ever seen, as we headed back up the Southeastern Freeway, just an hour from home.

More in the next segment of this trip!

Riverlands 2014, Part Two: Murray Bridge to Blanchetown

This is where we're headed, as we leave Murray Bridge after lunch on the riverboat Captain Proud; but --

It'll be a long drive as the afternoon shadows begin to lengthen over the roar to Mannum.

Mannum itself -- across the river. We didn't stop -- there's too many miles ahead of us ...

...as the road sign shows. We're booked in a cabin at Blanchetown for the night, 108 K's away.

Foot down on the loud pedal -- headed for Swan Reach now.

Along the road to Swan Reach, you're wanting to stop every few K's,
as the scenery becomes more beautiful along the river --

-- but don't scramble too close to the bank in search of that photo!

The views from Len Kroehn's Lookout are superb.

Lola takes a breather, not far from the tiny town of Nildottie.

A typically South Australian landscape, just a few K's from Nildottie

The Murray River has sustained life in South Australia since the earliest years of the colony.

A houseboat is tucked in at the bank of the Murray River very close to Nildottie.
Now, these guys have the right idea! And you can rent these houseboats. Hmmm...!

Back on the road, we're headed for Blanchetown --

-- more or less following the river and looking forward to dinner!

Houseboats cluster along the riverbank at Blanchetown --

-- as evening light falls over the wetlands. With the car unpacked, we took a stroll...

Swamp hens thrive in these lush wetlands...

A songbird was in full voice as these pictures were taken -- not a bird you'd hear closer to Adelaide,
and we have no idea what it was. Never caught a glimpse of it, sadly.

Photography meets art ... nice. Difficult exposure in the low light ...
and I'd switched to the tiny Nikon CoolPix picket camera.

Evening settles over the river, and we're ready for dinner and some sleep. We'll have a
very early start tomorrow, if we're to stick to schedule.

Dawn breaks over the River Murray at Blanchetown --

And you can tell with one glance at that sky, the weather is changing. It always does on these trips!

Houseboats in the dawn light, under a lowering sky ... and the river is busy with pelicans. You can see
them at lower right -- view this image at full size.

Kookaburras were cackling in the pink of the dawn as we headed back to the cabin...

We had one eye on that sky, wondering what might be coming up!

Sure enough, a weather front headed in as we made tracks for Morgan, in search of breakfast.

Main street Morgan -- and very good bacon and egg rolls!

From Murray Bridge to Blanchetown is a fairly long drive and, admittedly, we stopped numerous times for pictures. The late afternoon light was golden and the silence was profound over a landscape where tiny towns are strung like beads on a necklace, along the river.

The Murray River is quite something ... the third longest navigable river in the world (only the Amazon and Nile are longer), and over 2,500 K's in length, from the point where it rises in the Kosciusco National Park to its outfall at Goolwa -- and over 1,800 K's of this can be navigated. The river provides water to something like a million and a half households, via the third largest catchment system on the planet.

We've wanted to see every part of the river in South Australia, from the point where it crosses the border into this state, to the outfall. Well ... we've seen 95% of it, but the furthest reach, right on the state border, continues to elude us. Another year, for sure.

After the lunch cruise on the Captain Proud we headed out of Murray bridge with the intention of "making the plot up as we went along." Good plan! Evening found us checking into one of the town's two tourist parks. A stroll in the wetlands, dinner ... sleeeep! The night was almost silent, save for the roar of heavy trucks crossing the road bridge over the river, carrying freight to Adelaide.

We'd hoped for a spectacular sunrise, but the pictures above show just what happened. No colors! A flush of faint pink, and then a slow fade up into daylight. Dang. Next time. We packed the car and got out of dodge early, with the object in mind of hunting up breakfast in Morgan, along the river...

And that's where we'll be in the next post.