Sunday Drive
24th Oct 2018
Feeling just a little hemmed in by the city, we did a run up to the Murray Bridge, as it’s always a good day out to spend some time just about anywhere along this mighty old river, and besides, it gives the Ford a rare chance to get into 5th gear on the long stretches out there on the plains, which are all now starting to take on their summer browns.
Car parked in the shade of a jacaranda in a back street, we hit a caff for some early lunch, then wander around the town and along the banks, to soak up the atmosphere of this historic old burg that was always a major crossing point on this great waterway.
Right in the middle of the bridge, and arriving on cue like it was just for us, a paddle-wheeler came around the far bend, one of the old-timers that are reincarnated by enthusiasts from the occasionally still-seen relics stranded hip-deep and forgotten along the banks upstream, having long since lost their working place in the modern commercial world.
And during some research on the old fella, I came across one of those tragic little stories from the pioneering days, something that happened not far upstream from Wentworth.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I do so love these snippets from those epic times, times we can barely imagine today in our squeaky clean Smartphone and Snapchat and Microsoft world.
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On the 9th of November 1872 the six year old paddle-steamer “PS Providence” left Menindie upstream towing a barge, the boat and the barge both fully laden with about 400 bales of merino wool from the surrounding stations - everything uninsured. Boat included. They must have had a lot of faith in their boat’s namesake.
This was well before the river was tamed and controlled with today’s weir-and-lock system that maintains a fairly constant and predictable amount of water, and as it turned out, the “Providence” wasn’t the luckiest of outfits, having already been stranded out on those endless flood plains for a couple of months - many of those opportunistic outback up-river paddle-wheeler captains actually rode the floodwaters well away from the river course to pick up freight, then scamper back to the main rivercourse while they still had enough freeboard.
But this time the “Providence” was out with it's timing and was left high and dry and patiently waiting for the next high water, which back then and out there in those maze of shallow lakes and tributaries that could appear and disappear at will, it could have been weeks, months, or even years! Today we just have no concept of that sort of Time, Time as it existed back then. Or the kind of grit and patience needed to cope with that sort of life.
But, finally the “Providence” had real water under her keel once again and was back on its 600-odd km trip to Adelaide. All was well. Gumtrees and riverbank and gumtrees and riverbank endlessly sliding by at paddlewheel speed, under a relentless outback sun.
The crew was the captain John Davis, engineer Edward Sparkes, the fireman John Roach, Chinese cook Thomas Gunn, and George Grundy the bargemaster, along with two men and a boy as passengers.
About 12 kms south of the Medindie Lakes the “Providence” was plodding along nicely, but suddenly there was some sort of trouble with the paddlewheels, and it was later said that Capt Davis yelled out to “Stop her!” – so presumably Sparkes wound the steam engine into neutral, then Davis called out “One stroke ahead...” (I have no idea what this means) and for some reason – BOOOOOOM! - the boiler absolutely shat itself, and “...fragments of the steamer were hurled in all directions...”, and Davis, Sparkes, and Roach were all killed instantly and “...much mutilated”, while the cook Gunn was blown clean out of the boat into a tree, where he was later rescued, but subsequently died of his wounds.
Of the crew, only George Grundy the bargemaster survived, but one of the passengers was able to be taken on shore, with both legs broken, but he also later died of his injuries, and at the subsequent inquest it was reported that “...the force of the explosion was so great that fragments of the “Providence” were found at a considerable distance from the river...”, while the probable cause was thought to be that, although the boiler was at full heat, it was nearly empty, and somehow cold water was let in at the critical moment and up she went. One can only imagine that a certain amount of gin may have been involved, but no negligence was ever assigned.
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