ECHUCA–MOAMA, VIC–NSW TRAVEL
Just a short walk from the car, it suddenly came into view — a great cappuccino-coloured expanse flowing swiftly between the banks of gnarled river red gums. The mighty Murray River. A tiny flutter of excitement rushed through me as I saw it, like the kind you get when meeting a legend.
And the Murray is legendary. For around 40 million years, Australia's longest river has travelled 2508km from the Snowy Mountains in NSW to the river mouth at Goolwa in South Australia. It's seen it all, through changing times and countless droughts and floods.
1 his river is the treasured heartbeat ot Echuca-Moama, twin towns on the VIC-NSW border, a 2.5-hour drive north of Melbourne. The proximity of this particular bend in the river is what saw Echuca settled in the first place. The Murray was once a trade route bustling with cargo-carrying paddle steamers, and Echuca was the hub that dispersed goods via a direct rail link to Melbourne and beyond. Between 1865 and 1910, this was Australia's third largest port after Sydney and Melbourne.
A few paddle steamers still whistle and splash up the river, anchoring the town in its history, but today's visitors to the
