TheBanyanTree: Travels with a purpose 5

[Peter Macinnis]

One more to go after this!

As early as 1851, while Henry Hopwood was still trying to establish 
himself on the New South Wales side of the Murray, he wrote to the 
governor of Victoria, urging the use of steamers, and offering to build 
a small experimental vessel, but it was the wily South Australians who 
got into the river, two years later, but for the first ten years, they 
mainly worked the lower reaches.  Higher up, there were more overhanging 
trees, likely to knock down superstructures, more sand banks, more rocks 
and more fallen trees that might hole the hulls or smash the paddles.

After the railhead reached Echuca in 1864, there was more capacity, more 
boats came on the river, and others began to ply the Darling River, but 
the Murray's flow was uncontrolled, and there was only enough water to 
carry the boats through from April to November.  It was a boom that 
would last until 1900, by which time railways covered enough of the 
continent to rob the river boats of much of their trade.  The decline 
was slow but weary, and the last consignment of wool was shipped by 
river in 1936.

A sudden flush of water from rain could make the river navigable 
downstream again, but there was a catch.  Navigation on a river is not 
like navigation on the sea, because there are always dangers to port and 
starboard, and often ahead as well.  A vessel needs steerage way, so 
that it will answer to the rudder – the two paddles were directly 
connected to the engine, and always went in the same direction.  But if 
a vessel went faster than the current, so it could be steered, there was 
a risk of overtaking the front of the flow.  A bot might, at any moment, 
find itself entering shallow water and striking a snag or a rock. 
Sandbanks were less of a worry, because the following rising water would 
lift the vessel so that it could reverse off

The solution was to steam down during the day, tie up when the going 
began to look risky, and take off again the next morning.  Of course, 
when a real flood came, the steamers could tie up to the treetops, or 
take off across country.  Legend has it that some of them sailed 50 
miles away from the channel – and a few of them got stranded there until 
the next flood.

With time, regular snagging boats were established to get the dead trees 
out of the river – though they seem to have been smaller than the 
Mississippi ones.  Much of the time, they relied on being able to use 
the standing trees on the banks to winch logs out of the river.  The 
trees, which came right out over the water, made life difficult, as they 
were solid enough to rip out superstructure, and one or two Americans 
who set off up the river in "better" boats learned the hard way that the 
Murray and Darling were not the Mississippi.  As it was, the galley 
seemed to be placed in the most dangerous spot, on an edge of the boat 
at the front of the second level, below the wheelhouse, but on the side, 
where branches of overhanging redgums could crash in.

A side note about gum trees.  They are all members of the genus 
Eucalyptus, and there are about 700 of them.  They got their names in 
the early days of colonisation, because some of them dripped a sap known 
as kino.  They also made oil, and a Mr Maiden (no relation to James 
Maiden of Moama, I think) and a Mr Baker worked on these oils in the 
1890s at a museum where I later worked with Mr Baker's grandson.

So even if I were not an Australian botanist, I would be aware of the 
genus.  The river redgum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, is a superb 
specimen, and instantly recognisable.  Chris and I travelled Cyprus in 
2004 in a party that included a forester, and when we encountered a 
specimen, all three of us knew it right away.  Note that when we talk of 
"gums", we are not being excessively oral, nor are we talking of glues: 
we are generally referring to trees.  You can read more about the 
eucalyptus oil at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s235.htm

Many people along the river made a living from harvesting redgum.  At 
one stage, the streets of Sydney and Melbourne were largely paved with 
redgum blocks, and I recall seeing some of them being dug up, after I 
had left school, so it was some time in the 1960s.  People would go into 
the forest in summer when the water was low, cut the trees and mark 
them, and later, when the water rose and they could navigate through the 
flooded forest, they would return and use floats to buoy the logs out 
into the river to waiting barges.

A steamer would take three barges, load the first (that often means 
tying the logs under outriggers on the barge), and then release it to 
float downstream.  Somebody had discovered that a barge, dragging a 
heavy chain, would always keep to the centre of the deepest channel. 
Then they would release the second barge, then take off downstream with 
the last one, catching up with and securing the other barges.  It must 
have been fun for other steamers, working their way upstream.

Towing a heavy barge downstream in a 6-knot current is not that easy, 
especially when you want to stop.  The barges would have somebody on 
board to steer them, but the barges would only answer the rudder if they 
were at a different speed from the current.  If the towing boat needed 
to tie up at dusk, some complex manoeuvres were needed.  Sometimes the 
boat would turn in a wide reach and go stern first, so the barges were 
threaded backwards to points where they could be tied off — and that was 
how they handled cascades and small rapids.

At other times, serious prayer was needed, or a clever skipper might 
succeed in using the back-current along the bank to bring a barge to a 
halt, where a line could be taken ashore and fixed to a tree, something 
no seaman would ever dream of doing.  Put an experienced saltwater 
sailor on the river if you dared, but watch out for fireworks!  Not that 
the mariners were too polite about the river-men:  they referred to them 
as freshwater seamen but then lowering the tone to call them mud 
pirates, inside sailors and river rats.

This is the romance that surrounds Echuca, and it has been carefully 
retained.  Old sawmills may have closed, but the machinery has come into 
town, and High Street, once the scene of wild horse races, now has a 
library, bookshops and eateries.  The houses on the street are 
maintained and restored, but the people you see here are the tourists: 
the real town shops are two blocks over, nearer the river.

Here is where we see the difference between a manufactured and a natural 
tourist attraction.  If Echuca were a theme park, they would have 
carefully staged wild horse races along the street, and there would be a 
train of small wagons, towed by a car cunningly disguised as a 
paddlewheel tugboat, with commentaries in five languages and obligatory 
stops for lessons in whip-cracking, gumleaf-playing, gumboot throwing, 
thong clapping, boomerang-throwing, and other arts which have been part 
of the traditional Australian culture since 1987.  There is none of that.

The wharf area on the river has been renovated, and there are displays 
and a few crafte shoppes, but mostly, what was there is what you get. 
The end purpose is to channel people onto the river on a paddle steamer, 
so they can hear the sound of the paddles thunking in the water, watch 
the steam engine operating, and note all the neat little devices that 
slowly drip oil onto all the working parts.  One difference, though: in 
the old days, the oil would end up in the bilges, and be pumped out, but 
no more of that, thanks very much.

I began my experience of Echuca at daybreak on Thursday.  I could have 
walked, but I realised I wanted to sample a lot of places in a hurry: by 
now I knew that I would be off, well before daylight the next day, on a 
thundering trip home.

The river banks support large populations of water and land birds.  This 
area supported a large Aboriginal population, mainly because the river 
carried large stocks of fish and birds which could be hunted from bark 
canoes which carried them out to the deep cod holes where monstrous fish 
known as Murray cod can be found, even today, though the age of 113 kg 
183 cm cod has passed.  Even in flood times, there are no raging 
torrents, and a sheet of bark, taken from a gum tree, could be shaped 
into an effective device that would carry several people.  When Yarri 
rescued those 49 silly white people at Gundagai, he did so in a bark 
canoe, telling us that you can even carry several people, all but one of 
whom are in a panic.

The canoes interest me – I have a plot line in mind that would require a 
bark canoe, so I have been looking into them.  Some of the early whites 
commented that it had not occurred to the Aborigines to make dugout 
canoes, which are common in northern Australia.

In 1853, a German set out to make a dugout canoe, using local timbers, 
and found that there was nothing suitable on that part of the Murray 
River, though he was told there was suitable 'pine' elsewhere on the 
river.  We don't have pines: maybe people meant she-oaks, which have 
needle-like leaves, or maybe they meant cypress pines.  I doubt that 
either would be much use.  Besides, there were gum trees wherever you 
looked, and getting the bark off was easy, and so was forming it while 
it was green.

Back to the river at dawn, though.  The parrots and cockatoos set up a 
racket, ducks just waddle, look warily at dawn wanderers, and take off 
with whistling wings, out into the river, where they float in safety.  I 
followed the last, which seemed a little tamer, down to the water's 
edge, where it left me to read the safety signs.

The dangers there include overhead bridges and cables, especially when 
the water gets up, because the bridges and cables stay where they are. 
There are submerged fences when the water is high, sand and mud banks 
when the water is low, and snags, submerged trees, at any time.  Then 
there is the current, always a risk when coastal Australians get onto 
the alien environment of a river.

The moon was just beginning to wane, so it was slipping down the sky as 
the sun rose, and it occurred to me that river folk would be just as 
discommoded by tides if they ever went to sea.  On the river, though, 
the rise and fall is generally slower.

By now the sun was touching the tips of the trees, and even more birds 
got into the shouting match.  Echuca is not a good place to have a 
sleep-in.  Crows were yelling at other crows to get off their patch, 
gangs of ruffian kookaburras cackled threats at other tribes, a peewee 
was calling a danger signal, and there may or may not have been some 
sort of miner, declaring that a hawk was overhead.  The corellas and 
cockatoos were bellowing as well, making thinking hard and listening 
impossible.

On the wharf, the paddle steamers were getting ready.  A supply of sawn 
gum limbs had been dropped off a truck, and they were being pushed down 
a chute to a dump, ready to be loaded onto a steamer.  The good thing 
about the steamers was that they could get their fuel along the way, and 
families could make a living, sawing wood that sold for around a 
shilling a ton.  It wasn't a good living but a couple with three 
children old enough to barrow wood to the river bank could live on it, 
though part of the money went straight back to the skipper as they 
bought store goods.

By the 1870s, rabbits were in the area in plague proportions, so like 
many bush people, they would have set traps, sold the skins and eaten 
the meat, allowing them to live more frugally.  That let them stay out 
in the bush, where the children would have remained unschooled, but 
times were changing, slowly, and more people were being gathered into 
towns like Echuca, even as the brighter prospects were being creamed off 
to the city.  That is changing now, as bright city folk quit the rat 
race, but the riverboat people are something of a closed community.  To 
be a steam engineer, you need to have a reciprocating steam ticket, and 
15 years ago, I used to source my steam drivers for a museum from the 
Navy, where those skills were still being taught – it is only now that I 
begin to wonder about that.

On the river, I guess they learned on the job, but at some stage, they 
would have needed to be certified, because steam engines can eat you, 
and handled the wrong way, boilers can explode.  We had one steam engine 
that killed a man in the 19th century when he got into a fly-wheel that 
was half below floor level, and that engine could only run behind a high 
Perspex fence with a driver in attendance: when the driver needed to 
leave, the engine was closed down.

Still, aside from two Sydney museums and a few paddle-wheelers, there is 
little call for reciprocating steam drivers (as opposed to turbine steam 
drivers), so those jobs are jealously guarded for locals.  The same goes 
with deckhands and skippers, and even the roustabout who moves timber 
from the dump onto the boat is an old and experienced hand.

I watched the timber fuel being loaded, and wandered off for breakfast. 
  Then I returned to the 'government wharf', a high structure of dense, 
cross-braced hardwood that began in 1865, and took almost 20 years to 
complete, by which time it ran for more than a kilometre, enough to hold 
about 30 barges and boats, I guess, but when it was finished, the trade 
was already in decline, eroded by railways that carried the cargoes 
faster and more directly.  The wharf is still there: they say redgum is 
so tough, it's a wonder it doesn't rust, and there appear to be the 
original deck planks, in reality, slabs about 2 inches thick, more or 
less bolted and spiked into place with giant nails, a rough surface and 
a moving surface: as people walked across, you could hear and see the 
slabs working under them.  I will mark that as a plot element, but it 
was time to start exploring a boat. So I went down the steep timber 
steps to the lower levels.

peter

-- 
   _--|\    Peter Macinnis       petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
  /     \   Runner-up, Wallangumba submarine chess festival,
  \.--._*   unusually unreliable source on double negatives,
       v    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm