Friends of the Oscar W will deliver special letters from schoolchildren and invitations to the 16th biennial South Australian Wooden Boat Festival from April 22-23 to townships along the River Murray in remarkable fashion.
The paddle steamer will this month do the first re-enactment of the old river mail run since 1981, but this time along the way it will conduct a historic relighting of the Port Malcolm Lighthouse, which splits Lake Alexandrina from Lake Albert. It has not been lit for 85 years.
It will be a remarkable journey, setting off from the River Port of Goolwa on Friday, October 28 to Narrung, and the following morning heading through the narrow lake opening to Meningie carrying mail in traditional canvas sacks sent from schoolchildren from Goolwa and Milang to kids at Meningie Primary.
Letters from the Meningie Primary kids will be taken to Strathalbyn by a vintage car to meet the SteamRanger which, like in the old days, will take the mail to Mount Barker. From there, the mail will be delivered to the Adelaide GPO in a classic 1920s Graham-Paige American car and posted back to the Goolwa and Milang schools. The Oscar W will then return to Goolwa spreading the word about the Wooden Boat Festival along the way.
Overall, it is a wonderful history lesson and a connection between towns, especially when considering the Oscar W crew will be guests in Nurrung for a town hall dance party and this magnificent paddle steamer will feature in Meningie’s 150th anniversary celebrations.
Friends of the Oscar W committee and Goolwa Wharf Precinct member Graham Pratt said the mail re-enactment was a wonderful reminder of the incredible impact the Oscar W can have on not only Goolwa and its friends along the Murray, but our state history.
The journey has not come without tremendous planning and effort, including finding light bulbs for the lighthouse, and ensuring the Oscar W is able to navigate the channel through the Narrows into Lake Albert.
“The depth of the channel in the Narrows at Narrung has not been charted since the ‘bund’ was breached after the drought, and the fill washed away into the channel,” Graham said.
“The mail run will be a new role for the Oscar W which started to work at the bottom of the river in the 1940s with the locks and barrages and that kind of thing before turning into a mouldering hulk in Murray Bridge.
“Friends of the Oscar W was formed in 1986 and took over the effort to rescue the paddle steamer. It took until 2008 to nurse it back to survey standard, when we got the licence to carry passengers which became a revenue generator to keep it going.”
However, amidst this excitement for the mail run, Graham expressed concern shared among his committee for a need to remind the community of the continuing focal point the Oscar W provides the River Port of Goolwa and the SA Wooden Boat Festival, and how it all relies on volunteers.
“We generate enough money from cruising and chartering to help maintain the boat, and there is very little cost to the community,” Graham said.
“We are proud to say the Oscar W has become a tourist icon and that we carry the flag for many things.
“We have great support from the Alexandrina Council, but all of our skippers, engineers, steam men and so many other volunteers are like me in that they are generally getting long in the tooth and we need to have a succession plan.
“Our president David Finnie and vice-president Bruce Martin and those before them have always worked so hard, as have all of the committee members, but no one has ever seen it as a heavy workload – it has always been about sharing a passion.
“We need more volunteers to share the duties and create a new generation among the Friends of the Oscar W. We have a 10-person committee, and two may retire the our AGM in November. We are looking for people passionate about river history or simply those who would like to become involved with it.”
If you would like to get involved with the Oscar W, especially in the lead up to the important role it will play during the 16th biennial Wooden Boat Festival next April, you can contact Graham on 0418 803 377. You may also send an offer of help in the post – we can assure you that the Oscar W is reliable when it comes to collecting mail.
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