Holiday Day 5

We drove across from Adelaide to the Murray River port of Mannum to board the 'Murray Princess' for our seven night cruise.  As you can see the boat has a rear paddle which is not common for paddle boats on the Murray.  Normally paddle steams here are side wheelers, the reason being that paddle steamers towed barges and as the river can be very shallow in some spots, if the steamer ran aground then the barges would take out the paddle wheel.

If you look closely at the flag you will notice it is different to other Australian flags; the Murray River system has two specific flags, one for the upper river system (the Darling, etc) and one for the lower.  This is the lower Murray flag. (See Extra photo for more detail )

Our boat is the largest on the Murray and the largest paddle steamer in the southern hemisphere taking up to 120 passengers. More details here.