Paddle-Wheeling Through the Outback: A Week Aboard the PS Murray Princess

Mannum sits about 84 kilometres east of Adelaide, roughly an hour by road, which makes it the easiest river town in South Australia to reach and the obvious embarkation point for the PS Murray Princess. Most passengers arrive by coach transfer timed around midday, leaving time to wander the Mary Ann Reserve and look over the PS Marion, a paddle steamer built in the 1890s that now sits as a static exhibit by the water.

Boarding happens mid-afternoon, cabins allocated, and by around 4:30pm the ship eases off the wharf and swings upstream. The sun deck fills quickly for departure: a loop of applause from locals on the bank, a toot from the steam whistle, and the first of what will be five or six consecutive sunset drinks on open water with no coastline in sight.

The second day is given over almost entirely to the river itself. The channel narrows past Purnong and Walker Flat, and the red gums close in on both banks, their roots gnawed pale by decades of flood and drought. This is where the wildlife spotting earns its reputation: grey kangaroos on the open flats in the cooler hours, and pelicans working the shallows in loose, unbothered rafts of a dozen or more.

A mid-morning shore excursion in the ship's tender takes small groups into a backwater lagoon that the paddle-wheeler itself can't reach, dead quiet except for the occasional corella screeching overhead. Lunch back aboard is a barbecue on the rear deck, the only cruise lunch I've eaten anywhere with a view of nothing but gum trees on either side.

Morgan was once one of the busiest inland ports in the country, where paddle steamers transferred wool and wheat onto trains bound for Port Adelaide. The old railway wharf still stands, and a short walk along the riverfront takes you past rusted cranes and the restored railway station, now a small museum open most days from around 10am to 3pm.

The afternoon's shore excursion heads to Lock 1 at Blanchetown, the first of fourteen lock and weir structures built between the 1920s and 1930s to keep the upper Murray navigable through dry seasons. Watching a houseboat drop through the chamber, water falling away in stages, is a small, satisfying piece of engineering theatre that has nothing to do with tides and everything to do with holding a river at a working depth.

Banrock Station sits near Kingston-on-Murray, roughly midway between Waikerie and Renmark, and it's the cruise's one proper winery stop. A coach meets the ship at a riverside landing and climbs a short rise to the cellar door, where the real draw is the wetland boardwalk: a loop of a couple of kilometres through reed beds and lignum, with ibis and darters working the shallows below.

Back at the cellar door, a tasting flight of four or five wines runs maybe AUD 10 to 15 (recent seasons), often waived against a bottle bought on the way out. It's not the Barossa, and nobody pretends otherwise, but the Riverland's warm, irrigated vineyards produce honest, well-priced shiraz and chardonnay that taste exactly like where they were grown.

Renmark is the furthest point upstream the cruise reaches, and the ship generally ties up for most of a day before turning back toward Mannum. Right by the information centre sits the PS Industry, a paddle steamer built in the early 1910s and now permanently dry-docked as a static display, a useful reminder of how much of this region's early economy moved by river rather than road.

An afternoon free to wander takes you to Angove's cellar door, open most days from around 10am, where the family has been making wine here since the 1880s, and on to 919 Wines, a small operation just outside town worth the short taxi ride. By early evening the Murray Princess backs off the Renmark wharf and begins the slow retrace downstream, the same red gums and cliffs sliding past in reverse over the final two nights.