A quick stop in Mannum, South Australia – Day 302 (Pt2.)

If you read the first part of this review you will know that I paid Mannum a very quick visit as a stop on the Mid Murray Eco Drive. Our original plan was the spend a couple of days in Mannum but given inclement weather forecasts, which didn’t actually eventuate, we cut a longer stay in Mannum from this trip. As such, this is a very brief entry based on a short stroll along part of the foreshore and part of the town’s main street and I will write more when I get a chance to visit the town again.

Historically, Mannum, like Murray Bridge further downstream, was an important river port on the Murray River. Today, it is a popular holiday town with a focus on river-based activities such as paddle steamer trips, kayaking, fishing, and bird watching. Sadly, due to serious floods in early 2023 that inundated about half of the main street and the whole riverside area, many of these activities have still not returned to normal operation.

Speaking paddle steamers, we were fortunate to see the Murray Princess in port, undergoing some maintenance.

The Murray Princess paddle steamer (paddle wheeler) was built for the Murray River and is the largest inland paddle steamer in the southern hemisphere, catering for 120 passengers plus crew.

A closer look at the hydraulic stern wheel on the Murray Princess.

Also in town was this more modest paddle steamer with its paddle wheel encased on the side of the boat, the most common location nowadays.

A mural of a Murray River paddle steamer

In much greater abundance than paddle steamers on the Murray today are house boats and there were a few of these moored by the river bank in Mannum. While some of these may be privately owned many are available for rental.

The residual impact of 2023 flooding was obvious everywhere along my walk today, particularly along the foreshore where previously beautiful green lawns had just been cleared of flood debris and readied for recovery in the spring of 2023 (Sept here in southern hemisphere).

A little further along the foreshore is the Randell Dry Dock.

The citation in the The SA Heritage Places Database reads:

“The Randell Dry Dock, completed in 1876 during the peak of the river trade and operating for the next fifty years, is historically significant as a relic of the inland river transport system and its importance as a transport corridor in opening European development of the interior of the continent. Commissioned by wool merchant and ship owner A H Landseer and built in Milang in 1873, it was designed as a floating dry dock. In 1876 it was purchased by Captain William Randell and installed at Mannum as a dry (‘graving’) dock, thereby greatly extending Randell’s small ship building and repair facility there. One of only a few timber floating dry docks ever built in Australia, it was the only facility of its type on the Murray Darling River system, and is one of the few which remain in any significant form in the world.”

In the distance in the photo above is the Paddle Steamer Marion which was constructed 1897.

The PS Marion started life as a pleasure craft on Lake Alexandrina (at the mouth of the Murray) before being brought to Mannum where it has been restored. It now operates as a passenger vessel and is one of the last steam driven, wood fired, original, over night passenger carrying side wheelers in the world.

Next, while walking along the main street, I encountered a couple of buildings that piqued my interest.

The Lutheran Church sits high above the main street and was thus not impacted by the 2023 floods.

It is worth noting that Lutheran churches predominate in this area and the nearby Adelaide Hills where large numbers of Germans migrated from 1838 onwards. The majority of these migrants were ‘Old Lutherans’, who were escaping from the religious persecution of Frederick William III of Prussia who wanted them to acknowledge a revised form of Lutheran church service.

The Mannum Hotel, above, was built in 1869 and offered lodgings and food for travellers from the River Boats and others working along the Murray River. My Australian reader will be amused to hear that the hotel was called The Bogan until 1886! For others – Bogan: Australian slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour are unrefined or unsophisticated. In other parlance, a ‘yobbo’.

Even though our time was short in Mannum, we could not resist yielding to the temptation of trying out one of a few cafes in the centre of town before proceeding. There, we enjoyed a coffee with a vanilla slice for me and an apple pie for Andy. Both the coffees and pastries were delicious and were scoffed down before I remembered that I should have taken a picture of them to share here. Whoops!

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The next review from my Adelaide to Canberra road trip can be found HERE.

Should you wish to follow this road trip from the beginning please start HERE.

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