| On safari-- wildlife and nature photos |
 | The mighty River Murray |  |
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A pelican crosses the River Murray at dawn, and an azure kingfisher waits for the river to give up a feed. Such scenes may be under threat as the Murray struggles to meet the growing demands of human habitation
The slow-moving river traverses a flat, dry landscape for more than 2,500 kilometres in three States. It and its tributaries are the water-supply lifelines of many cities, towns, and rural industries. The pace of change in human practices is even more sluggish than the river, resulting in the ocean sometimes closing the Murray mouth with sandbars (earth-moving machines have been used to keep it open in recent years), and the river's even longer tributary, the Darling, being unable to bring water south from the sub-tropics
It's not the scope of this page to detail the Murray-Darling Basin's problems or the efforts of governments and individuals to solve them, but just to show some of the river's beauty
Point to the small images for captions, then click to enlarge the pictures.* preceding an image denotes medium format
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The river from the historic towns of Mannum and Morgan in South Australia. Mannum, widely regarded as the birthplace of the Murray paddlesteamer in the 19th century, is now host to tourist cruisers both modern and restored, and houseboats. The river is navigable for nearly 2,000 kilometres from Goolwa near the mouth to Yarrawonga in Victoria, though locks in weirs have to be negotiated
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The bustling city of Echuca in Victoria claims to be the paddlesteamer capital of Australia, with the biggest operating fleet of these boats, many of them restored 19th century vessels. Nowadays they carry tourists rather than rural production
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Click on the Maplink to see the course of the River Murray
The Murray's wildlife: probably the most notable and majestic are the Australian pelicans. But there are many other species, too
From the left, a male darter dries his wings, just a few metres from his brood of three in their nest in a tree overhanging the water's edge. A great egret waits for a meal in the shallows, a yellow-billed spoonbill waits similarly on a branch over the water, and a great cormorant perches on a snag
A whistling kite waits for prey; a Pacific black duck comes close to the camera, probably expecting a meal; a Regent parrot, another river resident, one that's endangered because of loss of habitat (this one is a captive specimen); a pair of galahs perches high in a riverside tree; another cockatoo, a preening Little corella, a species usually seen in huge flocks; and a sacred kingfisher, carrying an insect for its young, is annoyed to see a human close to its nesting hole in a limb of a weeping willow tree on the water's edge
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Nature's colours abound on the river: in the bark of a gum tree, a line of cloud following the river's course at dawn, and the red cliffs that tower over the water in many places. Eucalypt forest crowds the water's edge and at times is flooded by the river in other places, such as near Barmah in Victoria. The narrow stretch called the "Barmah choke" causes the river to back up at times of high flow
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The Hume dam was completed in the 1930s across the Murray and Mitta Mitta Rivers in north-east Victoria for water storage and for flood mitigation. Another man-made lake, for irrigation storage and recreation, is Mulwala at Yarrawonga. It drowned many of the Murray's greatest natural assets, the River red gums. In more recent years, in South Australia's Riverland, a wine company has done much to restore a wetlands system (Banrock Station) vital to the natural environment
For more historical and geographical information about the Murray, click Wikipedia, but beware of factual errors. Seek corroboration from other sources
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A Fuji GS645S Wide 60 rangefinder camera was used for several of the riverscape photos on this page, including most of the Mannum, Morgan, Echuca, Mulwala and Hume images. The rest were taken with Canon 35mm systems, using both tele and wide angle lenses with fill flash on some occasions. Films used were Sensia 100, Provia 100F and Velvia
