Victoria - Australia 2004 - page 581

3 The Murray River ¡
Mildura: 544km (337 miles) NW of Melbourne; Albury-Wadonga: 305km (189 miles) N of Melbourne; Echuca:
210km (130 miles) N of Melbourne
The Murray is Australia's version of the Mississippi River. Though it's a rushing
torrent of white water at its source in the Snowy Mountains, it becomes slow
moving and muddy brown by the time it becomes the meandering border
between Victoria and New South Wales. The Darling River, which starts off in
Queensland, feeds the Murray; together they make Australia's longest river.
Aborigines once used the Murray as a source of food and transportation, and
later the water was plied by paddle steamers, laden with wool and crops from the
land it helped irrigate. In 1842, the Murray was “discovered” by explorers
Hamilton Hume and William Howell on the first overland trek from Sydney to
Port Phillip, near Melbourne. As Hume later wrote, on their trek the explorers
“suddenly arrived at the bank of a very fine river—at least 60m wide, apparently
deep, the bank being 2.4m or 2.7m above the level, which is overflowed at the
time of flood . . . In the solid wood of a healthy tree I carved my name.” You
can still see the carved initials on a tree standing by the riverbank in Albury, on
the border between the two states.
ESSENTIALS
GETTING THERE Most visitors cross the river during an overland drive
between cities. There are two routes to get to the Murray from Melbourne:
Either take the Calder Highway to Mildura, which is a 6-hour drive, or take the
2 1 ⁄ 2 -hour route down the Midland Highway to Echuca. Traveling from Mel-
bourne to Mildura is only practical if you're continuing on to Broken Hill,
which is 297km (184 miles) north of Mildura. Those in a hurry to get to and
from Sydney can travel via the river-straddling twin towns of Albury-Wodonga
on the Hume Highway (about a 12-hr. trip with short stops).
V/Line ( & 13 61 96 in Victoria, or 03/9619 5000) runs regular train serv-
ices to Mildura, Echuca, and Albury-Wodonga.
VISITOR INFORMATION The Echuca and Moama and District Visitor
Information Centre, 2 Heygarth St., Echuca, VIC 3564 ( & 1800/804 446 or
03/5480 7555; fax [phone]; www.echucamoama.com), has plenty of maps
and information about accommodations and river cruises. It's open daily from
9am to 5pm. The Mildura Visitor Information & Booking Centre, 180-190
Deakin Ave., Mildura, VIC 3502 ( & 1800/039 043 or 03/5021 4424; fax 03/
5021 1836; www.milduratourism.com), offers similar services. It's open Monday
through Friday from 9am to 5:30pm and weekends from 9am to 5pm. If you're
passing through Albury, contact the Gateway Visitors Information Centre,
Gateway Village, Lincoln Causeway, Wadonga, VIC 3690 ( & 1800/800 743 or
02/6041 3875; fax [phone]), open daily from 9am to 5pm.
RIVER CRUISES & OTHER FUN STUFF
IN MILDURA Mildura is one of Australia's most important fruit-growing
areas. There was a time, however, when this was just semiarid, red dust country.
The area bloomed due to a little ingenuity and, of course, the Murray. The orig-
inal irrigation system consisted of two English water pumps and the manual labor
of hundreds of immigrants, who were put to work clearing the scrub and dig-
ging channels through the new fields. Today, the hungry land soaks up the water.
Several paddle steamers leave from Mildura wharf. One of the nicest boats is
the PS Melbourne ( & 03/5023 2200; fax [phone]), which was built in