E21 - Off to the Rush - North West Corner to Lake Bonney

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A river can be a map, a memory, and a meeting place all at once.  We follow the Murray’s sweep from Charles Sturt’s gruelling 1830 voyage and the collapse of the inland sea myth, to Joseph Hawdon’s cattle drive that carved the overland stock route, and then into the gritty detail of our 1852 party wrestling a stubborn Timor pony through sand toward Overland Corner and Lake Bonney.  The story unfolds in raw diary lines, vivid landscapes, and the older truths of Country that surface in shell middens and trade paths.

Sturt’s crew linked the Murrumbidgee, Darling, and Murray, reached Lake Alexandrina, and found a mouth barred by lagoons and sand.  Their triumph rewired maps but came at a physical cost.  Hawdon’s journal picks up where the boats could not: on the top of cream limestone cliffs and along plains thinly brushed with grass, he meets First Nations travellers carrying mussels and news, trading on an ancient network that ran the river long before drays.  Our 1852 trekkers move within that web, buying sheep from Jacob Hart, negotiating rain and sand, and learning how an untamed Murray set every pace, flood, and crossing.

Overland Corner turns from a bend into a hub: police station, smithy, hotel, and a staging point for drovers and coaches.  Devlin’s Pound holds two tales at once, a natural corral and a red-bearded ghost riding storm light above rumours of illegal grog and stolen cattle.  At Lake Bonney, or Nukamka, the night echoes with swan calls and the slap of wings, and the camp fills with First Nations families whose presence, ceremony, and trade point to older sovereignty.  Later, locks and weirs tame flows for navigation and water supply, but in these pages, the river still breathes in floods and droughts, reminding us why routes bent where they did and why stories pooled where cliffs meet water.

If this journey stirred your curiosity about the Murray’s layered past—explorers and drovers, middens and myths—follow the show, share it with a friend who loves Australian history, and leave a review so more listeners can find these river stories.

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