Tuesday 1 February - Morgan to Sugar Shack

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Morgan was very interesting. Formerly the largest port on the Murray, with six trains a day to and from Adelaide. A historic church, a museum with so much of interest and of course the historic station area. So many interesting sights.

After a lovely tour of the historic town of Morgan, we headed down river once again.

Formerly the morgue for the town.

The historic church in town

This old warehouse is now the local museum


A recent addition to the museum - a history timeline of the town and life on the river

Different areas of the Murray River have a different flag

Explanation of the flags

Convenient seat outside the craft shop inside the Information Centre!

Leaving Morgan we continued on into a strong head wind. Much cooler today after an electrical storm last night cooled things down. It's amazing how trees survive with all their roots exposed.

Hard to capture, but there were lots of white horses on the river with the strong wind blowing against the current


Arriving at Lock 1 at Blanchetown, the first to be built on the river, the Murray Princess was in the lock chamber. So we had to wait and cruise in circles until she was well clear of the lock and under the road bridge.


This is the weir as we waited in the lock on this trip all sluice gates open



This is the weir twelve months ago before the flood waters. Much lower water level.


Only a couple of sluice gates open


While in the lock we were amused watching the pelicans busily feeding on the fish being churned up by the fast flowing weir.

Safely moored at Sugar Shack, we took a very interesting walk along the bank, learning a lot about indigenous craft.

Our walk took us to this scar or canoe tree

Our captain talked about living along the river thousands of years ago as well as when graziers came to farm the land. Without the knowledge of the indigenous people they made many mistakes. He talked about how it was decided a new canoe was needed; how the tree was selected and the method by which the slice of bark was removed from the tree without damaging it.

Because of the importance of the Murray River to nearby communities over time, there are many such scar trees in and around the area.

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