Leave Day Eleven

We're back again. On the eleventh day we drove to Seymour to visit our old friend Denise and the three of us then went on to Nagambie the next town north of Seymour. After all the rain we have been having everywhere was green. We sat for a time beside Lake Nagambie and watched the gulls hovering about expecting a feed. We are well inland over the divide and there are still gulls.

Afterward we drove back to Seymour and walked along one of the heritage trails beside the Goulburn River. Weeks earlier, this river was close to breaking its banks at Seymour but after three days the level subsided. It was flowing rapidly the day we saw it. This water flows into the Murray. We hope all these good rains will help to save the Murray at its mouth in South Australia. No water has flowed into the sea from the Murray for about eleven years.

We are pictured beside the old Hume Highway bridge that took all that traffic until late October 1967. The history of this crossing is interesting. Travelers crossed by boat until 1863. The first punt to cross was around mid 1834. A low level bridge was constructed 1862-63 by Patrick Hanna. It was low so that debris could pass above it during a flood. The bridge pictured above replaced it and was build between May 1892 and April 1893 by contractor J.B. Farquharson. It was strengthened with steel girders in 1940 to handle the war traffic. In 1987 the Seymour Shire Council preserved it and incorporated it into the local heritage walk. Unfortunately, due to a series of mishaps the bridge is now in a terrible state and has been fenced off from the public. We wonder whether the Seymour Shire Council has the will to fix it up.