Morgan's Historic Town Walk

For a couple of loud decades, this sleepy town was the second-busiest port in South Australia — and Morgan's historic town walk lets you read the evidence street by street. The self-guided route circles the port precinct around Railway Terrace, where the customs house, courthouse and grand commercial buildings all date from the years after 1878, when the railway from Adelaide arrived to meet the river trade.

The set pieces are the wharf and the station. The Morgan wharf, built progressively from 1877 to 1912, still towers over the river — paddle steamers once queued along the bank beneath it while six trains a day ran the wool and wheat to Adelaide. The old railway station beside it has become the Port of Morgan museum, keeping the river-and-rail story alive; the first engine steamed in on 17 April 1878, and the last train pulled out in November 1969.

The walk finishes with lookout views over the great bend of the Murray, and it is free, flat and easily done in an hour or two. For the full rise-and-quiet-fall of the town, read Morgan, the port that time forgot.