Murray River Paddle 2016 Day 52 Mannum to Tailem Bend

Mannum to Tailem Bend

I had a lovely stay at the Mannum Riverside Caravan Park. I didn't realise how rough I looked until I went to take a shower. It's a wonder they took me in at all. The river is so wide it's like paddling on a lake. When a speed boat passes on the other side of the river, you can count minutes until the waves get to you. Mannum doesn't have a bridge, only two ferries which seem to operate 24 hours a day. It must hold back development, but since both sides are in South Australia, perhaps this is more of a solution than a problem, perhaps they prefer to keep everything on the same side of the river. I paid my respects to PS Marion, a proud passenger steamer, now restored and taking tours again.

Mannum lives and breathes its history. There are so many beautiful old buildings, it is as though they don't know what to do with them. Maybe the surplus of old buildings is because they are all made of stone. Even the local coin launderette is a lovely period building in great condition. The pubs looked especially inviting, however 8 am was a touch too early to be going on there.

I noticed that the oldest houses were amongst the furthest from the water. They knew about the 1956 flood. Despite our dams, it could happen again. Many people will be in trouble when it does. We won't be just looking at a few flooded 'shacks'.

Downstream from Mannum willows are common on both banks. There are many reasons why people planted willows. Planted on the corners of bends, they were used to guide paddle steamer captains along the main river channel. In this section of the river, it would have been very easy to choose the wrong direction, since the billabongs are old river courses and are often still connected to the main channel. The first firm of irrigation here was by building levees either side of the river, forcing the water level higher than the surrounding ground, then, when water was needed, gates were opened in the levees allowing the water to flow into the fields. The levees along the river still have these gates. The willows would have protected these community assets, by slowing down the current. Some people say that farmers use them to keep houseboat people off their land, however whilst Mannum does see itself as houseboat capital of the Murray (there are literally hundreds) and the South Australians do have a tendency to put the hose on unwanted guests, I can hardly see this as motivation for this type of landscaping.

Willows are becoming increasingly unpopular though. People remove them in front of their 'shacks' and commercial developments replace them with grass. Who does all the mowing? River users and managers are concerned about how they narrow the river channel. I have seen banks of willows that are 50 m deep. That is an awful lot to push through if you desperately need a toilet break after a morning coffee in Mannum. I have been told that it is possible to walk over them if you're separate. Thankfully I wasn't. Around Murray Bridge they have made removing willows and restoring native vegetation an art form. Large sections seem to have been sprayed with something, which, whilst it does not necessarily kill them, it weakens them to the point that they are easier to pull out. Large sections of river bank, nearly 15km, have been restored very well. Reeds, rushes, understory plants and the fringing red gums have grown astonishingly quickly and are forming thick, effective and much better looking bank protection.

The levee banks are an issue though. This area is densely settled, perhaps because it was so easy to irrigate by using the old billabongs. When a community on one side of the river raises their levee bank, it means that the other side will flood when the river rises, so they raise theirs too. If they could all agree there might not be a problem, however today I saw the big machinery working on one side, tip trucks and road compactors. Wonder what will be happening on the other side in the next few days? Levees can provide a false sense of security. If the river channel cannot hold the 80,000 megalitres per day that is coming, then they both will flood.

The cliffs which were such a feature of the past week are fewer and further between. Tailem Bend, which I will paddle past first thing in the morning, will be the last of them. The town is high above the river and is barely visible from the water. Where once river trade was crucial to its existence, it now focuses on the road that runs through it. From the lookout you can see how the river does one last big bend before it undergoes its last big change in character. In the Great Dividing Range the Murray behaved like a mountain stream, with rapids, and gravel races; hillslopes ran straight into the river. Around Corowa, it began to meander within its ancient channel, which was dammed to form Lake Mulwala. From Tocumwal it enters the first of two giant river red gum forests, formed when earthquakes blocked, split and changed the Murray's course. The second redgum forest grew on an ancient delta, where the Murray entered Australia's inland sea 30 million years ago. After this comes the arid zone, sandhills and salt left by the inland sea. Finally the Murray Gorge, where the river carved its way through uplifted limestone, leaving great cliffs on either side. Lake Alexandrina and the Coorong are part of today's delta. The lake and the Coorong are shallow because the river drops its sediment there before entering the sea. If there is not much flow, then the mouth closes up because of that sediment and sand washed in from the sea. This year this should not be a problem.

Tomorrow, if the weather is suitable, I will have a go at the lake. Strong winds are predicted in the coming days, so a bit of a head start would be good. I'll push off at first light to complete the last official part of my study; the 16 km into Wellington. I've taken around 35,000 photographs, recorded 800 videos commenting on tree condition, what we can tell from it and how historical land use, current practices and river management may have influenced their condition. I have met many, many people keen to tell me their story, that of their community and why the river is so important to them. It's been an awesome experience. Way better than I could have imagined.

Tomorrow I will make my last record of tree condition, because the Murray River Channel, the most forgotten and taken for granted of its six icon sites, ends there. From that point I will concentrate on Lake Alexandrina, Goolwa and the Murray Mouth. I want to go via Goolwa because that is where the paddle steamers went. It is right and proper to honour those that went before you... and after all, I'm a river man. It's in my blood.