Lock 4 Bookpurnong

Lock 4 holds the river on the lovely, lightly travelled reach between Berri and Loxton, where the Murray splits around the Katarapko floodplain. Like its siblings up and down the river it was built in the great lock-and-weir program of the early twentieth century, and it still works for a living: houseboats and tinnies arrange passage with the lockmaster and step up or down the pool while onlookers watch from the bank.

The visitor end of things is simple and good — a shaded picnic area with free barbecues, a boat ramp on Nitschke Road, and reliable fishing water above and below the weir. Anglers rate the turbulent water downstream for callop and the patient art of Murray cod.

Lock 4 is also a gateway: the Lock 4 section of Katarapko in Murray River National Park begins nearby, with 19 riverside campsites including the popular Booky Cliffs camps under the ochre banks of Bookpurnong. How the locks remade the river is told in the locks that tamed the Murray.