The Murray is King(fisher)

The river that wraps around a good part of our city before snaking off in a westerly direction — the 654km-long Goulburn — ends near Echuca, when it joins the Murray.

I think sometimes if you grow up in a place where something is a huge part of the landscape, you unintentionally take it for granted, and don’t always look into its history or the rare things about it like you might if you were visiting the area.

I mean, sure, we all know it’s special or we wouldn’t camp along it, ski on it, fish in it, build where there’s views of it, and so on.

But how often do we consider it from an outsider’s point of view?

In the spirit of being a tourist close to home every once in a while, I booked my son — my youngest (14) — and myself tickets on a Murray River cruise out of the Barmah National Forest on a boat called the Kingfisher.

Skippered by Dharnya cultural officer Ralph Hume, the leisurely putt down the river goes for about 90 minutes.

But at Barmah, the river, known as Dhungala in native Yorta Yorta language, isn’t like any other stretch of the Murray.

Here, where it’s around 1770km to its mouth into the ocean in South Australia, it narrows into what is called the Barmah Choke, or Murray River Choke.

‘The Narrows’, as its known locally, is a section of the river that naturally constricts to around 20 per cent of its upstream capacity.

As Ralph and his offsider, Grace, pointed out to passengers, you could see we were sitting higher on that section the river than the level of the adjacent lake, which is fed directly from the river.

It looked like an optical illusion, but as it turned out, our eyes weren’t playing tricks on us.

As we floated along searching unsuccessfully for koalas in the trees above, swallows and dragonflies darted around the boat.

Whistling kites flew overhead, kingfishers flitted close to the water, and wagtails did what wagtails do best: wagged their tails while perching on fallen logs over the fast-flowing water.

Ralph’s well-trained eye spotted a pair of sleek blue dollarbirds high in a bare tree.

But apart from the dirty-big glistening black snake, head raised, sunning itself on the road in, and a few jumping fish, the birdlife were the only fruits of our search for fauna.

The flora, on the other hand, was abundant.

And with Ralph and Grace’s extensive knowledge of the land that they readily shared, we not only learned the names of each species, but whether they were native, what they were traditionally used for in Aborginal culture, whether they had medicinal properties, why the sap was leaking from a very distinct straight line only part way up a gum tree, why certain varieties grow burls, and so on.

The history, culture and environmental education didn’t stop there.

We learned that 17 Aboriginal Nations lived along the Murray; we learned how they hunted and fished and with which tools, and their traditional names.

It was a 90-minute lesson learning the lore of the land.

Ralph said at one point, “It’s not a bad office, hey?”

I’d agree; but it is, perhaps, an even better classroom.