The Long Paddock

We have been wanting to do this for a while. The Long Paddock is a section of New South Wales that has a great deal of history associated with it and this time it's because of the droving industry.The long paddock comes from times when there was no feed at home for the graziers to feed their stock so, they hit the road, or the long paddock. In this part of New South Wales, it was part of the National stock route which, basically lead from the Gulf of Carpentaria, to the Southern Port of Melbourne.Take notice when you drive out of Moama, heading North and see where the fence boundaries are, you will see they are up to a kilometre apart on either side of the cobb highway. Founder of Echuca, Henry Hopwood, had a boiling down works on the river bank, just out of Moama, at about where  merool caravan park is today and that is the southern  end of the Long paddock. Hopwoods works, abattoir, took advantage of the herds coming through that would normally be swum across the river, to the point of him building a punt that would ferry them across, and, at a price of course.The place where Hopwood chose for his ferry site was downstream of where a fellow Tasmanian convict, James Maiden, had the earliest punt at about the front gate of Maidens Inn caravan park today. Enterprising chap, Hopwood. His punt location meant TWO river crossings, Murray and Campaspe and he charged to cross BOTH.
The Long Paddock leads to the Kidman Way, another famous Australian grazing name, You may recognize that as belonging to Nicole, but Sidney Kidman was her ancestor and he marched his cattle from the Gulf through Queensland and New South Wales to Victoria. Sir Sidney was once the owner of Murray Downs station at Swan Hill. Kidman was known as the Cattle King and there is a book of that name worth reading.
Our visit last year to Camooweal and the tourist attraction there, "The Drovers Camp" was a real eye opener. The research about this industry and the effect and importance

it had on the country is fascinating and so it is worthwhile visiting that complex if in the area.