South Australia 2024: Coorong National Park

After our holiday in the houseboat on Murray River we visited Coorong National Park. The place where Storm Boy lived. Amazing.

Once our houseboat was back safe in Younghusband, we crossed the Murray again in Mannum by ferry before continuing on to Murray Bridge. We stopped at Mannum Dock Museum which was quite interesting, having a lot of stories about the history of paddle steamers in the area, the Millennium drought of 1996 – 2010, which affected this area pretty badly, as well as the floods both in 2022 – 23, but mainly about the one in 1953 which was the most severe one. As we left, we noticed the Murray Princess docked in Mannum, not far from the museum.

We drove past beautiful scenery again, dominated by wheat fields and hay bales. Murray Bridge is quite a pretty little place. The jacarandas were in bloom and the gum trees were decorated with big wrapped up gifts. We nearly left the town without crossing the famous bridge so we went back across it, then back into town before heading out towards Goolwa.

We had lunch at a really nice place called Kuti Shack, where they served mainly fish or seafood-based dishes. It was really hot when we were there, inviting for a dip in the ocean. The local Surf life savers had their nest right next to it, so we watched a couple of them training.

After lunch we went to check in at Boat Haven Studios, right next to Murray River and a small marina.

It was still pretty hot (40 degree day!) so we had an afternoon nap then drove to Hindmarsh Island to admire the mouth of Murray River. It looks even better from up high.

We came back to town and walked along the jetty, had dinner at Hector’s, a nice restaurant on the wharf where food was nice but the smell was pretty bad, then kept walking until we reached Goolwa Regatta Yacht Club where they had just finished a sail boat race so we had a look at the boats before making the return trip to the accomodation. The mozzies were pretty bad and we hadn’t used repellent so got a few bites :-(.

After breakfast we went to see Goolwa Barrage, which is part of a series of dams built to control the fresh water supply in that area. We saw lots of birds again (including some very young harrier chicks) and lots of seals.

Back in town, we came across Signal Point Art Gallery where they had some stories about the area and also an interesting exhibition about Palm Springs in California (and the Jackrabbit homes, very interesting to us after the Route 66 trip last year).

As we were walking back towards the town we came across a garden with rocks tucked under the hedges, a memorial plaque on each of them. It is the gardens of the local RSL club, a simple place that holds a certain stillness and invites reflection.

A Spirit of the Coorong cruise is a good way to see the Coorong. The rain turned it into an even more interesting experience – we left from the wharf in Goolwa, went up river for a bit, almost close to our accommodation, got told some more stories about the local paddle steamers. We then turned around, went past the Regatta Yacht Club and also got shown the boats used in the newer (2019) version of Storm Boy. Next we went through the lock at Goolwa Barrage before we reached Murray River mouth and then the Coorong. We saw the location of the shacks in the new Storm Boy movie at Godfrey’s Landing, then stopped and walked across the dunes at Barker’s Knoll, looked for pipis on the beach, met some local fauna.

The drive back was faster as people were soaked (many didn’t have a rain jacket and still went for the walk), it was cold (and they had to leave the doors open as it was fogging inside) and we also had to be back through the Goolwa Barrage lock before 4:30 pm.

Our last dinner in the area was at a Laotian restaurant called Gardens of Nang. The food was very nice, a less spicy but as flavoursome version of Thai food with some Chinese / Vietnamese traits as well. After dinner we walked from our accommodation to the wharf and back to admire the rainbow brought out by the storm clouds and the beautiful sunset light.