River Murray Towns: Morgan

• Morgan is situated on a bend in the River Murray, known as the 'North West Bend', 'Great Bend' or 'Great Elbow', about 165 kilometres north-east of Adelaide.
• Naralte Aborigines inhabited the area before European settlement.
• Europeans established pastoral settlements in the district from the 1850s and Morgan became a stopping point for overlanders bringing cattle to and from South Australia, and a place where steamers could collect wood to feed their boilers.
• The settlement boomed from 1878 when a railway from Adelaide was built to tap the River Murray steamer trade and Morgan was proclaimed a town.
• The town is named after Sir William Morgan, Chief Secretary of South Australia at the time and later Governor of South Australia.
• Morgan was one of the busiest river ports of the 1880s and became South Australia's second biggest port, after Port Adelaide. On its huge wharf gangs of employees worked continuous shifts to unload the cargo of the riverboats in the high-water season. At its longest, the Morgan wharf was 168 metres long.
• South Australia's oldest operating paddle steamer, the PS Mayflower, is now moored at Morgan.
• Today Morgan is a popular holiday spot and the home port of many houseboats that can be hired by holidaymakers. The Port of Morgan Historic Museum provides visitors with a window on the town's past as a vibrant and important River Murray port.

Further reading

Boden, J. The historic port of Morgan and the north west bend, Mannum, SA: Rod Williams, 1998

Links

Morgan, Murray River, South Australia

MurrayRiver.com - Morgan