The first of a series of seven locks on the Murray in South Australia (William Randell Lock in honour of the pioneer of river navigation in the 1800's) was completed in 1922.
There is a hotel, a swimming area, a caravan park, camping sites and a Store.
The old bridge in the town gives an excellent view of Lock 1 and circling above are hundreds of hungry pelicans that love to feed on the schools of fish near the spillway.
Five days was long enough here , only one other caravan present until Friday night when the place got swamped with weekend visitors, the weather was good except for Tuesday when it got to 37 c thank goodness the aircon kept us cool.
The fishing was a bit of a no goer, too many small ones only one keeper in 4 days, then i hooked a beauty , it took me five minutes to reel in to the pontoon , i yelled for Cath who was knitting on the bank to come and help me as i had no landing net and intended to grab it by its gills , she hurried down and i was on my knees when i asked her to hold the rod, instead of holding it she lifted it and broke the bloody line , i never said a word but hell i thought a lot.
The river had a lot of pelicans and cormorants and i mean a lot, probably why the fishing was bad , looked like i had a pet cormorant , he followed me from pontoon to pontoon at least he got a good feed of the small ones.
2 paddle steamers came past and went through the locke, and one hooked up to a pontoon for the night, didn't seem to have many passengers aboard for a 3 days cruise.







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