Cobdogla Steam Friends
Working steam history at the Cobdogla irrigation site
The Riverland exists because engineers learned to lift the Murray onto the surrounding plains, and nowhere tells that story better than Cobdogla. Here, beside Lake Bonney near Barmera, the old pumping station and its extraordinary machinery survive in the care of dedicated volunteers.
The site is home to the Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum precinct, where the centrepiece is a rare working Humphrey pump — one of very few left anywhere — alongside steam engines, pumps and the apparatus of early irrigation.
Machinery is fired up on special steam-up days, when the whole site comes alive with hissing pistons and the smell of hot oil. It's an evocative window into the muscle that built the Riverland's citrus and vine country.
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Image credits
- 1906 built 0-4-0ST Bagnall steam locomotive at Cobdogla Steam and Irrigation Museum (Flickr 27855423617).jpg by Chrysler Restorers SA , CC0 via Wikimedia Commons