April 23-24: Visit to Echuca

Step back a century into Echuca's unique and enchanted history!

This is what the brochure for the Steampacket Inn, a heritage boutique Bed and Breakfast Hotel, offered us for a two-day visit! How could we refuse? So we headed up to the mid-northern section of our state of Victoria to experience this for ourselves. We were not disappointed! Three and a half hours later, we arrived to find our hotel in the heart of the historic Port of Echuca precinct. Upon our arrival we were greeted with chocolates and a complimentary bottle of wine. The hotel promised a relaxing holiday - and how could a person not help but relax when the room had neither a phone nor a clock to keep us on a tight schedule?

That evening we set off to find our chosen dinner location - the "Oscar W" restaurant along the banks of the Murray River. We were very impressed with the poetry on the walls of the restaurant, and when we learned that the "W" in the restaurant's name stood for "Wilde", we were so surprised to think that the famous Irish poet Oscar Wilde had been immortalized in a restaurant in a small Australian town!

Later, however, we learned that the restaurant was actually named after a pioneer farmer in the area named Oscar Wilde!

The next morning, after having dined sumptiously on a hot breakfast at the inn, we set off to explore the town. Rick went to the Holden Museum while Karin shopped. As we wandered among the historic buildings,

we could just picture the town's heyday as a bustling port in the 1870s, a time when steam ruled over rail and river at the old Echuca wharf. We learned that wool was the lifeblood of the port, and the wharf became a place of bustle and activity, with the constant arrival and departure of paddlesteamers during the season when the river was high enough to allow them to travel. Today woodworkers and blacksmiths still create and sell their wares in the old shops along the port. Echuca was built between two placid rivers, the wide Murray River and the picturesque Campaspe River. It is situated right on the border of Victoria, linked with the town of Moama in New South Wales by a bridge crossing the Murray River. We went for a hike by the Horseshoe Lagoon in Moama which afforded us the chance to see all sorts of wildlife in and around the water.

The aftermath of a heavy rain helped to create a misty moody morning.

Best of all was the lunchtime paddlesteamer cruise that we took down the Murray River with the beautiful River Red Gum forests stretching out on either side of the river. These Red Gum forests and wetlands of the Murray River are highly valued for their natural, aesthetic, cultural and economic values. Check out our separate cheeky blog entitled "Houseboat Haven on the Murray River" for a description of our cruise! Beautiful river walks have been created along both rivers in Echuca. We enjoyed another walk at dusk along the Campaspe River, where ducks swam on the water, a kookaburra laughed merrily nearby, and thousands of sulphur-crested cockatoos gathered to roost in the giant red gum trees for the night. A delicious Chinese food dinner that evening capped off a perfect time in Echuca!