Murray Bridge & Historical Conference

We headed to Murray Bridge, where State History Conference was happening. Its a river town about 1.5 hrs away from the city. I picked Cam up from a train station on Friday afternoon & we were in Murray Bridge in time for the opening reception. Overall it was a good conference, but I am not closer to getting/finding a job.

We took a tour along the river including railroad related buildings and a boat ride on a restored paddle riverboat. It was The Marion, appropriate that we should ride that boat because we lived about 4 houses away from Marion Road in the City of Marion. Here we are on the deck, just in front of the wood-fired engine.

Most of these shots are from the waterfront area. Here's Cam near a crane just next to the dock. There was a flour mill that is slated for becoming a shopping center just behind me when I took this shot.

From the deck of our boat, we saw another crane and some rail cars on spurs that connected with a main line running between Broken Hill and Port Adelaide, I think.

Finally, after the conference was over, we went upriver to see the Randell dry dock. Some folks from Flinders University had done some excavations that we heard about at the conference & although I saw pictures, I thought it would be nice to see it for myself. This dock was created as a floating dock to service riverboat vessels on the Murray. At some point, it was wedged into the shoreline at the town of Mannum. There are preservation issues with the dock due to the drastic decrease in river water.