The Coorong. sea lions at the Murray River estuary.
Image by denisbin
Goolwa. Sturt passed here on 10th February 1830. Population 9,000.
The Currency Creek Special Survey was taken out in 1839 by the Currency Creek Association based in England. Locally it was their agent Robert Wright who paid for it on behalf of about 30 men. The Currency Creek Association laid out a major town which they hoped would become the New Orleans of the South. It was after all on a good river, near a great lake and near the mouth of the mighty Murray River. Its location was similar to that of New Orleans which was at the mouth of the Mississippi in the USA. They named it after the local river- Currency Creek. They also laid out a much smaller port for the town which they called Goolwa. Currency Creek town covered 8 acres, Goolwa 2 acres. History would show they made the wrong decision as Goolwa prospered and Currency Creek withered! One of the early explorers of this region Young Hutchinson (who explored with Thomas Strangways) liked the area so much that he became a major landowner in Goolwa in 1856. Another explorer William Younghusband gave his name to the peninsula near the Murray Mouth. Although the town of Goolwa was laid out in 1840 sales were minimal until the Governor committed the state to developing Goolwa as a river port and Port Elliot as a coastal port for future riverboat trade up the Murray with a horse railway to connect the two. Work began on this £20,000 project in 1851. (An alternate plan to build a canal between the two at an estimated cost of £28,000 was not pursued by the government.) Apart from the Currency Creek Special Survey of 1839 the government also surveyed land along the proposed rail route to Port Elliot in 1849 making land available to buyers. The first land purchases in this region were made in 1849 at Middleton.
The Murray Mouth.
Collet Barker left Raffles Bay in August 1829 to take command of the penal settlement at King George Sound, which he administered with skill, and where he repeated his former success in conciliating hostile Aboriginals. The settlers at Swan River objected however, to the presence of convicts in their colony and Governor (Sir) James Stirling was not happy to have within his territory a military post under the command of the governor of New South Wales. In March 1831 the station was closed and Barker sailed with the convicts in the Isabella. On the voyage to Sydney he was asked to determine the outlet of the River Murray. He examined the eastern shore of Gulf St Vincent from Cape Jervis northward, climbed Mount Lofty, found Adelaide’s future port and named the near-by Sturt River. From Yankalilla Bay he went overland with a party to Encounter Bay where alone he swam the Murray mouth and was speared to death by Aboriginals on 30 April 1831. His journal of this exploration was not completed and accounts of it by his lieutenant were later to cause much confusion when South Australia was settled. His murder by the Ngarrindjeri was senseless and indicates the ferocity of the Ngarrindjeri.
Who was William Younghusband?
William Younghusband (1819 to 1863) was born in Cumberland England in 1819. He arrived in South Australia in 1840 and the ship Gunga but without his wife and family. He arrived in SA again on the barque Fortfield on 22 June 1842 and he returned in January 1843 as the Captain of his father’s trading ship the Fortfield. His wife Louisa arrived in SA on the 26 October 1844 from Liverpool on the barque named Bleng. She was accompanied by their maid and daughters Sarah born in 1838 and Eliza born circa 1840. (Twin sons were born in North Adelaide in 1852.) Before their arrival in Adelaide William Younghusband was managing the barque Fortfield for voyages with goods and passengers between Adelaide and Sydney from February 1843. In April 1843 he took out his first occupation licence over some pastoral land and in late 1844 he had a store or office built in King William Street. He then established his own wool broking and shipping service with a partner in 1845 with offices in Adelaide. In 1845 he also took out a leasehold run on the western side of the Flinders Ranges. The next run he obtained was between the Para/Gawler and Light Rivers on the Adelaide Plains in 1846. He was an early investor in copper mines in Sth Australia. Then in 1853 he helped establish the River Murray paddle steamer trade from Goolwa up to Echuca in Victoria and along the Darling River with Captain Francis Cadell of Goolwa. Next Younghusband became a partner in the Murray River Steam Navigation Company with Cadell. He later had his own steamship company Younghusband Ltd. It had offices in Lockhart in the Riverina near Wagga Wagga and elsewhere. In 1854 William Younghusband built a small stone cottage with an attic room for their maid on the front of Lake Alexandrina at Goolwa. This house remained in the hands of his descendants until the 1950s and was enlarged several times but it was not the main family residence. That was in North Adelaide. Younghusband became a member of the Legislative Council of South Australia from 1851 until full self-government was instituted in 1856. To obviate the need for extensive travel to the Legislative Council he had a house in Stanley Street North Adelaide in 1851. After full self-government was granted to South Australia in 1856 William Younghusband was elected to the Legislative Council and was Chief Secretary of Premier Hansen’s government from 1856 to 1860. He retired from parliament in 1861. He established several government departments during this time. As a successful businessman he was also a director of the Bank of Australasia. The nearby Younghusband Peninsula on the edge of the Coorong was named after him. He died of typhus fever whilst holidaying in Rome in 1863. He had married Louisa Thomas in Calcutta in September 1836 not long before he first ventured to the new province of South Australia. His wife died at their North Adelaide home in 1869.
The Barrages. Sturt passed here on 11th February 1830.
The waters of the Darling and the Murray are the life blood of SA. But current political discussions about saving the water flows of the rivers and irrigation rights are not new. History repeats itself. The first political furore over the Murray happened in 1886 when NSW and Victoria agreed to control the river, totally ignoring SA. Fortunately this agreement faltered when Sir Henry Parkes as NSW Premier in 1890 wanted no further negotiations. Then 123 years ago in 1902, after a prolonged drought between 1895-1902, the new Federal government joined with the Murray states (SA, Vic and NSW) for a major conference on water usage at Corowa near Albury. State premiers and the new Prime Minister met to discuss water regulation to maintain flows in times of drought. The outcome was not direct action but a Royal Commission. It later advised that navigation of the river in times of drought would be secured by the construction of weirs across the Murray but until then SA had to be guaranteed a certain amount of water so restrictions should apply to NSW and Victoria. A Murray River Commission should be established to enforce these restrictions but it was 1915 before this Commission was established. Little was actually achieved apart from the building of weirs over the next 20 years. We have not greatly progressed since this time! In the 1930s the construction of the Murray River Mouth barrages began as the last part of controlling the Murray River water levels as the locks along the river were nearing completion. Physical work on the barrages started in 1935 but preliminary work had started earlier. The five barrages were completed in 1940. They were designed to maintain the river levels between Goolwa and Lock One( Randell Lock) at Blanchetown and to keep the salt water from the Southern Ocean and the Coorong out of the Murray River channels to Lake Alexandrina. Basically the barrages keep lakes Alexandrina and Albert free of salt so that the water is usable by cattle and stock. The five barrages total 1.6 kms in length. We pass through the lock in the barrages to visit the Murray River estuary.
