Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows journalist Bill Peach interviewing local historian Alan Barton about the history of Bourke in central-western New South Wales as a thriving river port in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The interview is intercut with black-and-white photographs showing Bourke’s three-tiered wharf and paddle-steamers lining the banks of the Darling River. Barton talks about the construction of the wharf, the first bridge to span the Darling River and the extension of the railway to Bourke. He describes the epic journey of the Jane Eliza paddle-steamer up the Darling River. The clip includes background music.

Educational value points

• Bourke, which is 789 km north-west of Sydney and situated on the Darling River, became a major inland port in the second half of the 19th century. Paddle-steamers transported wool to seaports in South Australia and Victoria, where the cargo was then transferred via rail to Adelaide and Melbourne. Paddle-steamers replaced the slow and more expensive bullock- and horse-drawn wagons and camel trains, and Bourke became the transport hub for south-western Queensland and western NSW.

• Settlement and cultivation of the inland regions of south-western Queensland, western NSW, northern Vic and the Murray Valley in SA were fostered by the development of the Darling and Murray rivers as a transport route in the 1860s. While wool was initially the main export, the introduction of irrigation systems on farms in the 1880s saw the production of cotton, citrus fruits and wheat, which were also transported downriver by the paddle-steamers.

• The Darling River, which begins in the Darling Downs in southern Queensland, is the longest river in Australia, extending 2,739 km through Queensland and NSW until it meets the Murray River at Wentworth. Rainfall in the region is erratic, producing a cycle of flood and drought that affects the river flow. Consequently, paddle-steamers could only operate for about eight months of the year.

• Henry Lawson described the Darling River as 'either a muddy gutter or a second Mississippi’ where, like the Jane Eliza mentioned in the clip, boats could be stranded for months if river channels dried up and became a string of waterholes. In the 1900s a system of locks and weirs was introduced to regulate the river flow.

• By the 1890s, 40,000 bales of wool were shipped down the Darling River each year and approximately 100 paddle-steamers and barges worked the river. The boats also carried grain and other produce from the interior, and returned with household and farming supplies for the inland settlers. Paddle-steamers converted into floating general stores travelled the river selling goods such as flour, tea, beer, sugar, dried fruit, cheese, tobacco, stoves, drapery, boots, sewing machines, wire, galvanised iron, kerosene, candles and saddlery.

• The paddle-steamers, modelled on the boats used in the Mississippi River in the USA, were flat bottomed and designed to sit high in the water to avoid the snags, sudden shallows and dangerous currents that were a feature of the Darling River. Many of the boats were built in settlements along the Murray and Darling rivers from local timbers such as red gum. The boats had two or three decks, were up to 36.5 m long and weighed approximately 250 tonnes. They were fuelled by wood cut from the riverbanks and propelled by paddles either at the rear or on each side of the boat.

• To increase the amount of cargo they could carry, the paddle-steamers usually towed a barge either behind or alongside. A badly stacked or overladen barge could easily capsize, so they had to be carefully loaded with the cargo no higher than two-thirds of the width of the barge. Wool bales were stacked in a pyramid with a single row of bales at the top. Each layer of bales was secured with wire cables in case the barge hit a sandbank or snag in the river.

• In 1885 the railway from Sydney was extended so that paddle-steamers ended their journey down the river at Bourke, bringing cargo to the railhead from further upstream and then loading up with supplies for the return journey. In the 1890s the river trade was still vibrant enough for a three-tiered wharf to be built to facilitate the loading and unloading of the boats. However, the building of good roads and the extension of the railway inland beyond Bourke eventually meant an end to river transport, the last commercial paddle-steamer ceasing operation in 1931.

• The paddle-steamer Jane Eliza established the record for the longest trip up the Darling River when it took just over three years, between 1883 and 1886, to travel from Morgan on the Murray River in SA to Bourke. The boat was carrying building materials for a pub being constructed at Bourke, but by the time it arrived the pub had been completed. The Jane Eliza was delayed partly by a long drought that dried up the river, but when the boat finally reached Bourke the floodwaters arrived and it took only two weeks to return to Goolwa in SA with three barges of wool.

• The clip is taken from Peach’s Australia, an Australian Broadcasting Commission series of half-hour programs that aired between 1975 and 1976. In the series, television personality Bill Peach sought out 'little known facets of the country’s history and their relation to present day conditions in the particular areas’ (www.abc.net.au).