Riverlands 2014, Part Four: The food basket of South Australia, and the proverbial "pub in the scrub"

Destination Murray River ... and we're there! The river is the life's blood of South Australia, and --

--driving through the Riverlands, you're surrounded by vineyards and orchards...

... it's the richest agricultural country we've ever seen, on three continents.

Little communities like Cadell supply much of the state's fruit and vegetables --

-- such as oranges, which are year-round crops in South Australia.

South Australia's Riverlands, near Waikerie ... orchards as far as you can see.

And here's the Murray River at Waikerie, where the paddle steamer Murray River Queen ties up...
and check out those houseboats moored a little way along the riverbank!

The Murray River Queen is a serious vessel. She offers tours as long as a week, cruising the river
from these waters with up to Renmark. Gotta do that one day. Soon.

Wetlands are habitats for a vast assortment of birdlife. Dead trees like this are not merely curiously
photogenic, but they are also where native parrots nest, so many dead trees are actually protected: do not cut!

On the road again, heading for Barmera and Loxton. Eventually. But first --

Toolunka Flats. Yes, Virginia, there really is a place called Toolunka (which tends to sound like a
native village from a Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movie). Actually, it's a wetlands project, and --

-- very beautiful indeed. See the orchards and market gardens stretching to the horizon, too.

Toolunka Flats under a gorious morning sky. The clouds parted, the sun shone! Grab the cameras!

Then we were back on the road -- specifically, the Goyder Highway. We've driven both ends of this highway,
but never the middle stretch, east from World's End (see it on an earlier post). We need to drive the whole thing...

Not surprisingly, it's quite a busy road; and predictably, you share it with a great many
semi-trailers hauling produce to the city.

You also share the road with kangaroos, so -- watch out. (Actually, roos are seldom active before
twilight, so during main daylight hours you're more likely to glimpse them napping under  tree.)

Desperate for a cuppa, we literally stumbled over a jewel in the wilderness -- the proverbial
"pub in the scrub," the Overland Corner Hotel...

The Overland Corner Hotel is just there in the middle of nowhere. It was built in 1895 to
service drovers and "overlanders" making the haul between NSW and Adelaide, and the
National Trust bought it in 1965. What a fantastic place!

The Overland Corner stands in a large garden where one can dine outdoors; but in 1956 --

Yes, the whole region was deep underwater in the 1956 flood.

Original colonial construction, brand-new galvanized iron roof...

...horseshoe for luck (the right way up, thank you!), and a gorgeous chandelier in the bar just inside.

The interior of the Overland Corner Hotel has been updated just a little, but the overall
construction and flavor are original. It's like stepping right into Cash and Company! (Which,
incidentally, just came out on DVD. We're loving it ... again. Saw it in 1975.)

Live music plays in the gardens at the weekend, and --

-- if you're having your cuppa outside, check out these tables. They're great slabs of polished local stone
set on upright logs. Now, we have got to have one of these at home!

The Overland Corner Hotel isn't a secret. Taking up six spaces in the parking lot was this tour bus,
just over from bushranger country -- the Victorian mountains -- and headed who knows where?
Great place to stop for tea and a taste of history.

Love the art on the back of the bus. The Man from Snowy River rides again.

We had actually parked in the wide, open space behind the hotel. Here's "Lola in the wilderness" ...
well, not quite. You could hear the music from the pub as you stepped out of the car, because --

Overland Corner is also a "biosphere reserve" and wetlands project, and the hotel
backs right onto the area being reclaimed. In the rainy season, it'll be a chorus of frogs...

...such as the Golden Bell-frog, which, like so many species, is "vulnerable" in South Australia.
Areas like Overland Corner will make all the difference to the survival of many animals and birds.

Cruising the fruit and vegetable area at the supermarket, you can sometimes wonder where it all comes from; and if you take the drive from Morgan via towns like Cadell and Waikerie to Barmera and Loxton, you'll know where it comes from! We've never seen such rich agricultural land, and it all pivots around the Murray River.

You can see this lush, beautiful region from the road, as we did, or from the water. In fact, if you're interested, there's a major website arranging tours ... check it out. It's easy for folks from Adelaide to load up the car and head out early in the morning, but we'd also dearly love to "lead foot it" through to Renmark and then get on a riverboat for the cruise through to those towering red cliffs. One day!

For the moment, we hopped from one photo-op to another, and one cafe to the next. Late in the afternoon we were dying for a cuppa -- tea, not coffee; we were coffee'd right up to the eyeballs. We hadn't know the Overland Corner Hotel even existed before we rolled up to it, and we were due a marvelous surprise. Original colonial-era building, lovely garden, live music ... great tea! Also very friendly people who gave permission for photos to be taken and uploaded. Here are just a few of about a hundred we took.

The land was pretty dry when we were there, but if you visited in late autumn, winter or early spring, the wetlands should be ... wet. You'd certainly hear the Golden Bell-frog, though you'd be very lucky to catch sight of one. Aussie frogs are usually invisible -- and astonishingly loud.

From Overland Corner we were headed toward Loxton and Barmera ... but Banrock Station and Murray River Lock 3 came up first; and those will be in the next post in this series.

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!