A recent interstate road trip with lifelong friend Martin Bryan, led us to a glide on the Murray river. Aficionados of wooden boats ogle at the age of Echuca’s paddle steamers. We took the PS Adelaide, claimed by the owners to be “the oldest working wooden hulled paddle steamer in the world”. She was built in 1866. This  claim deserved research and I will refer to the result below.

After almost two weeks of uncertainty, and six months' worth of mud drying on the weary paddle wheeler's hull, Longreach tourism company Outback Pioneers revealed the boat would not be able to cruise again.

It's an ignominious resting place for the 99-year-old wooden paddle wheeler, which attracted national headlines when it was trucked nearly 1,750 kilometres from country Victoria to Longreach in May 2022.