The Places You Can't Go on Hindmarsh Island.

 Hindmarsh is the largest island in the Murray mouth and I had grand plans of riding my bicycle all over the island, but then we went to see the barrages and drove over the Hindmarsh bridge, exploring in motorised comfort instead.

X marks the river mouth.

Hindmarsh Island was originally occupied by the Ngarrindjerri people.  History is, as always, silent on what happened to the Ngarrindjerri people in between 1831,  when they quickly dispatched Captain Collett Barker who swam across the river to the island while surveying the river mouth, and 1849 when Europeans settled the island for grazing. By 1848 a ferry ran from Goolwa to the island, and in 2001 the Hindmarsh Island bridge was completed with much fanfare and bitter disputes between local landowners, indigenous groups, governments, and pretty much anyone else who had an opinion on whether or not the bridge should go ahead.  

Go ahead it did. Twenty years and one Royal Commission later it continues to be a very useful bridge.

It's a pretty bridge too, viewed from the Hindmarsh lookout which would be a fantastic place for a picnic were it not home to a zillion mosquitoes, any and all of which could be seething with Murray River encephalitis.

Our first stickybeak stop was the Coorong Quays Hindmarsh Island marina which was apparently the largest fresh water marina in the Southern Hemisphere and I wish I could report that it was an exciting place but alas, that was not the case.  Like all marinas it featured large houses backing onto canals, and  like all marinas the vessels parked in the canals reflected the location of the marina.  On the Gold Coast the vessels were all about recreation in fast, smooth play boats; in Port Lincoln the vessels were all about business, specifically the bluefin tuna industry; and in Coorong Quays everyone had a houseboat parked out the back.  Which made sense when you considered that it would be entirely possible to putter off in a  houseboat and not come home for a year or two, the Murray being navigable all the way to Albury which was more or less a round trip of 4000 kilometers.  

The rest of Hindmarsh Island was quiet and rural and not the largest of anything.  Roger had the pleasure of talking to a man who lived on the inland side of the island, where the houses were smaller and the marina/river access had a definite DIY flavour.  "Wouldn't live in the marina if you paid me!" He said proudly.  "They're all exposed to the southerly winds. Much more sheltered on this side of the island."

It looked nice enough.

We drove past salt lakes and lagoons in the centre of the island, and skirted around the Lawari Conservation Park with its extensive wetlands, home to migrating birds from all over the world.

The sheltered side of the island.

The sandhills of the Coorong were visible across the waters of the Mundoo Channel.

We weren't just wandering around aimlessly: we were trying  to get to the Mundoo Island barrage but that wasn't going to happen.  We weren't the first people to try this and the weather station on the Hindmarsh end of the barrage was quite clear that driving (or walking) down to the barrage was not something that we would be doing any time soon.  There was a very shut and locked gate there too, just in case we couldn't read the signs.

Bummer.

Swallowing our crushing disappointment, we went to the Murray Mouth lookout instead.

We looked out across the river mouth to the Pullen Spit, where the 4WD man  had taken such pains with my bicycle photo that morning.  The afternoon was obviously the time when solitude happened at the Pullen Spit: the 4WDs and fishers were all gone. 

The dredge, however, was still there.

Home we went, past the Hindmarsh Island lookout where we discovered the zillion mosquitoes and decided not to come back for a picnic.  On the way we got excited about 'Mundoo Island and Coorong Tours' promoted by another sign at another locked gate.

Mundoo Island hadn't offered tours for quite some time.  Bummer again.

Cycle touring legend had it that back in 2015 a touring cyclist rode from Meningie to Goolwa across the barrages, back in the days before CCTV and gates at the end of the barrages.  Back then Mundoo Island offered tours where visitors could see interesting things like:

• The Old Mundoo Barrage, built in 1914.
• Pt Blenkinsop Lighthouse, which guided paddle steamers through the Murray mouth from 1877. 
• Remains of the township built to house the barrage construction men and their families.
• Remains of the Mundoo Island School
  
• The first commercially built hovercraft in the southern hemisphere - the Hovergem G6 Hovercraft, built in 1969.
  

Mundoo Island didn't do any of these exciting things any more and they had red writing all over their website to make sure people like us got the message.

Message gotten, people like us went home, fed the cats, and planned our last week in Goolwa instead.