Saturday we drove to Mannum which is a town on the Murray River. It is known as the houseboat capital. It is 85km east of Adelaide. Trevor’s brother Graham lives there and has offered to take us out for a spin on the river in his boat. It was a great thing for us to do. The river has dropped 2m in the last ten years and you see boat moorings which are now in land quite a way from the waters edge. It is unlikely that the rivers level will ever rise that much again. We saw one of three paddle steamers the PS Marion built in 1897 that is available for hire and occasional river trips, it still is the original. Houseboats that are usually rented out this time of year sit in dock because people believe the river is too dry or shallow to hire one out. This part of the river can be anywhere from 2-6m deep but this is only because it is between lochs. It is very sad to see the river this way and the predicted rainfall for coming years is not encouraging. There is a lot of negotiation between Victoria and SA Governments for Victoria to release water into SA but nothing seems to be happening in a hurry. It appears the smaller towns are missing out and getting water into the cities takes priority (due to more votes probably) resulting in many farmers having to move off their farms and this in turn means having to buy our produce from overseas. Water allocation for existing farmers along the Murray is not working either with State water over allocating available water. The water situation for this part of the world is pretty dire indeed. Everywhere is so dry and brown it must be so disheartening for those living here.
Sunday saw us going to Port Adelaide, 14kms northwest of Adelaide. We took the kayaks so we could kayak along the Port Adelaide Ships Graveyard. We kayaked the one at Garden Island. Upto 25 ships have been scuttled in this area. We only paddled to the first one as it was so hot and still and the others were just too far away. We were out for about 1.5 hours. The paddle to the first wreck was past lots of mangroves, apparently there are upto 18,000 in this area. Despite being hot we enjoyed the paddle. From here we went into town for a picnic lunch and were meeting Trevor and Margy for a 1.5 hour boat trip around the port. The port was celebrating a Flotilla for kids with cancer so there were quite a few things happening including both bridges being lifted for the flotilla of boats to go under. This is quite a rare occurrence so we were lucky to get some shots. We wandered around the markets – typical markets similar to Fremantle markets except this one had tonnes and tonnes of secondhand books – never seen so many in one place. We met Margy and Trevor who had two of their nieces and two nephews with them who were coming along for the boat ride. The boat ride was quite interesting and and took us out to the heads and back. It was a relief to get into the air conditioning. After this the four or us went out for dinner at a local pub. Trevor and John shared a crab platter and Trevor experienced his first attempt at eating crabs proper with bib and tools. They also had soft shell crab which left a lot to be desired. After stuffing our faces we went home for ice cream and coffee.
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