Echuca. The Echuca railway station beside the Echuca wharf. Now closed but part of the tourist trail.

Introduction to Echuca and its history. Population Echuca-Moama 20,500. When captains Cadell of Goolwa and Randell of Gumeracha had a South Australian government sponsored race to reach the Darling River and prove the River Murray was navigable in 1853 they probably did not foresee the huge development of the river boat trade. The River Murray was to be a transportation conduit to the outback and inland areas like the Mississippi River in America. Paddle steamer river boats with shallow drafts were first used in the 1820s along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. They were adapted from rear wheel vessels to side wheel vessels in Australia. A few centres grew into major river ports- Morgan, Milang, Wentworth and Echuca. But Echuca outstripped them all as it was developed shortly after the Victorian gold rushes and it was the closest point on the River Murray to booming Melbourne. Some say Echuca was built upon the entrepreneurship of one man Henry Hopwood who arrived in the area in 1849. He was an ex-convict with big ideas. He began a ferry service across the Murray and later built a pontoon bridge. A government surveyor laid out a town in 1854 which he named Echuca from a local Aboriginal word meaning “meeting of the waters” as Echuca is at the confluence of the Campaspe and Murray rivers and the mighty Goulburn River also enters the Murray just a short distance away. In 1824 the explorer Hamilton Hume named the Murray the Hume River after his father. But in 1830 Charles Sturt after leaving the Murrumbidgee thought he had discovered a new river and he named it the Murray River after his friend in the British Colonial Office, Sir George Murray, Secretary of the Colonies. The Goulburn River was named in 1835/36 by Major Thomas Mitchell on his explorations. He named it after the Frederick Goulburn who was then Colonial Secretary of NSW and he also named the Campaspe River which rises near Mt Macedon. He was obviously thinking of his classical education when he named the Campaspe. Alexander the Great (356 BC to 323BC) of Greece had a famous artist paint one of his concubines and when the artist fell in love with the beautiful Campaspe, Alexander the Great “gave” Campaspe to the artist. Campaspe in the nude or only partially clothed was a popular painting subject in the early 1800s in Britain. Mitchell named Mount Macedon after an ancient Greek King Phillip II of Macedon (359 BC to 336 BC). Because three major rivers meet in the locality of Echuca lakes large flood plains with billabongs abound. One water channel from this area flows north to the Murrumbidgee River and is known as the Edward River. These flood plains along the Murray are now mainly national parks and reserves called the Barmah Lakes and Forests with the first area being declared as such in 1908. Early pastoralists were attracted to this country and many of the River Red gums were felled by woodsmen for railway sleepers across Victoria and NSW. The cycle of flood and drought favoured the River Red gums. The major floods of the River Murray were in 1867, 1870 – the biggest highest flood of the white era – 1916, 1931, 1956 and 1975.

 

The town grew quickly and in 1858 Henry Hopwood built the Bridge Hotel which he claimed was the best outside of Melbourne. The locals referred to him as King Hopwood although he was transported to Van Diemans Land as a convict charged with theft in 1834. He reached this Victorian part of NSW in 1850. At that time he established the first River Murray ferry service followed by a pontoon bridge in 1857. The ferry fees he charged with his monopoly soon made him a rich man. Because of the commercially strategic location the railway reached Echuca from the gold mining centre of Bendigo in 1864 so that Victoria could capture the Riverina trade through Moama on the NSW side of the Murray. Everything favoured Echuca’s development. Until Federation in 1901 all the independent colonies levied port duties on goods coming into or out of their colonies and Echuca was an important customs town. By the 1870s when more than two hundred paddle steamers regularly traversed the rivers here Echuca expanded with a multi-tiered wooden wharf so that steamers could dock regardless of the river level. The first small wharf was built in 1865 with extensions in the 1870s and this wharf eventually reached over one kilometre long when extended in 1884! As business boomed the town grew with 60 licensed hotels by 1876. The river trade not only transported wool from the pastoralists and supplies but it required extensive supplies of wood for fuel for the steamers, labour, ropes and equipment etc. Echuca was the second port of Victoria after Port Melbourne for tonnage handled in the 1870s. It was the largest inland port in Australia and it vied with Morgan as the main port to handle wool bought down the Darling River by paddle steamer. There were also paddle steamer services from Echuca to Shepparton on the Goulburn River. But the town eventually declined as railways which began Echuca’s boom also ended the importance of the river boat trade in Victoria. The boom was over by 1890 but by then Echuca was an established town with substantial and impressive buildings. The river boat trade persisted into the 1930s but on a much reduced scale. The next boom for Echuca was after World War Two when surrounding land was irrigated for horticulture, viticulture and intensive agriculture.

 

Henry Hopwood’s Bridge Hotel still stands as does the original Town Hall built in 1868 and designed by architect W.C Vahland from Bendigo. Along the waterfront you can still see the Steam Packet Hotel, the Customs House, the Bond Store (where goods were stored by the government until the duties were paid) and a small part of the great wharf. The fine brick Customs House was built in 1884 with a thin strip of sandstone around the windows and across the brickwork. The Bond Store was also built in red brick with pilasters across the front and a pediment to hide the roof line. The “King of Echuca” Hopwood also built a fine house which he named Apsley House facing Connelly Street. Part of it still remains at the Catholic College. When he died in 1869 the “King of Echuca” was buried in the town cemetery and he was remembered by a memorial pew in the Anglican Church. He became a wealthy man because he negotiated a monopoly of the ferry service across the river with the Victorian government. His contract included his heirs also retaining the monopoly. They eventually sold out to the Victorian government but the days of ferry services ended anyway with the construction of the mighty iron bridge across the Murray. A bridge between two colonies required both to agree and the conflict that the bridge engendered was really a part of the Australian federation story. Both colonies agree in 1864 to pay part of the bridge cost but disagreement emerged over tariffs and import/export duties. The agreement was reactivated after the great Murray floods of 1867 and 1870. Work finally started on the iron bridge in 1875. Heavy iron posts from England were carted by rail from Port Melbourne as there were no NSW railways near the river at that time. In April 1877 a disaster occurred when a crane crashed and collapsed iron and stone pillars. Six men were killed. The bridge opened in December 1878 but it only caused mayhem. NSW had not inspected and signed off on the bridge and travellers were charged a fee for using the “free” bridge. Angry mobs assembled near the bridge and protested several times and the Victorian government considered prosecuting rioters. Finally the bridge opened in April 1879 with no official opening ceremony by either government! Once the bridge was open competition between Moama in NSW and Victorian Echuca intensified. The railway from Deniliquin reached Moama in 1876 adding to the inter-colonial trade rivalry. Echuca reached a population of 5,000 by 1878.

 

Support for Australian federation came especially from the Riverina/Murray districts like Echuca as they were the most effected by trade tariffs between Victoria and NSW. The Riverina was settled as the main NSW grain producing region in the late 19th century but it was much closer to Melbourne than Sydney. Grain was carted across the border at Echuca. NSW was a free trade colony but Victoria was a protectionist colony. Thus towns developed each side of the river at crossing points – Wodonga and Albury; Wahgunyah and Corowa; Echuca and Moama. The railways were pushed up much sooner from Melbourne than from Sydney and grain was transported by rail from Echuca by the mid-1870s. NSW railway lines only reached Riverina towns in the 1890s and even later. So the Echuca district was directly interested in the benefits of federation especially the abolition of tariffs and customs but the other great issue was the control of the Murray River and its waters. In NSW Sir Henry Parkes pushed for federation and the other colonies waited to see if NSW would push ahead with the idea as their approval was always going to be crucial. Parkes began the push for federation in speeches in 1881 and again more seriously in 1889. The first national constitution convention was held in 1891 in Sydney. In the next couple of years the localised Australian Natives Association formed many more branches and became a national movement. Along the River Murray the Border Federation League was formed in Corowa and soon spread to Echuca/Moama and other regional towns. It was at a meeting of the Border Federation League in 1893 that Dr John Quick of Bendigo moved a motion to provide a process to achieve federation. This was something the arguing statesmen and politicians could not achieve. He moved that colonial parliaments should pass enabling legislation to send delegates to a national convention to adopt a constitution. From this point on the federation movement gained great impetus especially with support from the Riverina and river towns like Echuca. The movement culminated in the inauguration of the Commonwealth on January 1st 1901.

 

Apart from the River Murray providing a smooth navigable surface for transportation the river flats near Echuca led to the development of the major industry of the town- timber milling. River red gum timer was railed from Echuca all over Victoria for its railways. River red gum railway sleepers were transported down the Murray from Echuca to Morgan to build the Kapunda to Morgan railway in 1878. By 1869 one of several the timber mills in Echuca covered six acres. Logs were taken from the Barham forests and the Goulburn River valley and transported downstream to Echuca. But the Murray provided more for the town. The supply of timber made Echuca one of the major paddle steamer building sites along the Murray. Red gums provided wood for the boats and wood for their boilers. A slipway was soon erected in Echuca and the first steamer rolled into the river in 1864 but one earlier boat, without the assistance of a slipway, was constructed in 1858. Echuca had constructed 48 paddle steamers and 54 barges by 1895. Eighteen of the 48 paddle steamers were built between 1874 and 1878. The boat building stopped in the 1920s. Several foundries in the town produced ship bells and other equipment. The river trade led to wool scouring or fellmongering, boiling down works and tanneries. All these hard manual workers required alcohol and Echuca had several major breweries in the 19th century. The growth of the town surrounded by farmers or selectors led to conflict between the big squatter ad sheep shearers and other labourers. This resulted in the famous burning of the paddle steamer PS Rodney in 1894. Australia suffered a major depression in 1890, banks collapsed as did the price for wool. When pastoralist’s tried to reduce shearer wages conflict and strikes emerged. Shearers unison were first formed in 1891. In Queensland this resulted in violent conflict between unionists and pastoralists and Banjo Paterson’s song Waltzing Mathilda covers this issue. The original lyrics were written in 1895 by Banjo Paterson and it was first published as sheet music in 1903. Paterson wrote the poem in 1894 while staying at the Dagworth Homestead (near Winton), where in September of that year some shearers went on strike before violence erupted.

Up came the jumbuck( sheep) to drink at the waterhole,Up came the squatter a-riding his thoroughbred;

Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him in glee; And he sang as he put him away in his tucker-bag,

'You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.' CHORUS'You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.' CHORUS

 

Up came policemen - one, two and three. Up sprang the swagman and jumped in the waterhole,

'Whose is the jumbuck you've got in the tucker bag? Drowning himself by the Coolibah tree;

You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.' CHORUSAnd his voice can be heard as it sings in the billabongs,'Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?'

 

Near Echuca shearers went on strike in 1894 and camped along the river. One camp had 220 men in it by July 1894. They tried to block use of the bridge to Moama and the unloading of trains in Echuca with non-union shearers. In August 1894 trouble flared up. But it was near Pooncarie on the Darling River that a crew of boatmen from Echuca were moored on the banks of the Darling in the PS Rodney with non –union labour for an upstream station. The Rodney was built in Echuca in 1875. The non-unionists on board were thrown overboard and the crew allowed to leave and then the Rodney was set on fire. The news was not appreciated in the workers home town of Echuca. Only half a dozen of the arsonists were arrested, but then acquitted when tried by the Court in Broken Hill. Eventually one was convicted in a second trial in Sydney. By then the trouble had calmed down.

 

Done