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An opportunity was offered on Friday, the 3rd November, of seeing Moama, on the New South Wales side of the Murray. A steamer bringing sheep across landed a small party at the Horseshoe lagoon, a high standing piece of ground, bordering on a lagoon. There were about twenty tents there containing Moama people. A walk of 100 yards brought us in view of Moama. There was not one of the forty houses of which the township consists that was not flooded. The whole of them stood in a lake. The most conspicuous building was the Junction Hotel, ns badly off as any of the rest. No people bad remained in the township they were either in Echuca or on the high land on their own side. The flood rose there during Sunday night and compelled the inhabitants to clear out at the earliest dawn on Monday. On the way from Echuca to the Horseshoe, the steamer passed some five or six buildings on both sides of the river.
Those which were not flooded up to the apex of the roof were at least flooded up to the eaves. One set of buildings was pointed out as Freeman's Aerated-water Works-covered all but the roof. Beyond the Horseshoe there was a little visible of another set of buildings; they were stated, to be a tannery and woolwashing establishment. In order to pass from the ordinary channel of the river to the Horseshoe, the steamer had to navigate her way through numerous gum trees. In one or two places gum trees had been cut over to make a clear road for her and her attendant punts. The view of the township of Echuca from the station was most melancholy. There were twenty or thirty houses to be seen standing in the water- houses not referred to above mostly on the east side of the line. As viewed from the station Echuca looks like a town built in the water.
The flood attained its highest point on Friday afternoon, and began to fall about midnight. By 8 o'clock in the morning, a mark out on one of the piles of the wharf showed that the water had gone down nearly an inch, and by the afternoon there was every prospect of a certain, though very slow, return of the Murray and Campaspe rivers to their ordinary level. The area of the flooded ground, however, had not been appreciably lessened. Some blacks about the township speak of even a higher flood than the present forty years ago, but not much dependence is to be placed on their statements, which are as like as not to be inaccurate to the extent of two foot or three feet. No fresh damage has occurred since Friday. When it had become evident to-day that the flood was subsiding, some men were told off to repair the railway line between the station and the wharf. The line proved the salvation of many houses in Echuca, though it did not wholly prevent the Murray water from getting across.
At Moama, as far as the eye could reach along the road to Deniliquin, marked out by the line of telegraph posts and the absence of trees, nothing but water was visible. There was four feet of water over every part of the township, and a slow current running. Not a building, from the court-house to the smallest humpy, had escaped. The outbuilding which the boat was fastened to was put up, they say, in 1836, and from that time to September last, Moama was never known to be flooded. The September flood was not near so mischievous ns the present.
On the way back to Echuca a stoppage was made at Messrs Schakell and Franklin's tannery and wool-washing establishment, consisting of three or four two-storied wooden buildings. The water was within two feet of the upper floor; everything moveable had been carried to the upper floor and the roof, but a small engine was partly under water. An opportunity did not present itself of visiting the Echuca Meat-preserving Company's works, some six miles above Echuca. Only a few of the hundred men employed there had remained on the buildings.
The land for miles round was reported to be flooded, and the water was several feet in the building. It had partly covered the machinery, which, however, was hoped to have been preserved from serious injury by the good greasing it received before the water got up to it. There was only one family driven to the necessity of applying for provisions in Echuca, A good many men who might otherwise have been pinched for necessaries obtained work at the rate of one shilling an hour, in building and attending to embankments.
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