Olivewood Historic Homestead & Museum

If one building explains why the Riverland exists, it is Olivewood. This low log homestead was built in 1889 for Charles Chaffey, whose brothers George and William — Canadian irrigation engineers — had founded Australia's first irrigation colony at Renmark two years earlier. The walls are dropped Murray pine logs, the verandahs are deep, and the whole place still sits inside its original olive grove a short stroll from the Renmark riverfront.

The homestead is State Heritage listed and cared for by the National Trust, whose volunteers have filled it and the adjoining Charles Chaffey Centre with the texture of early Renmark: working printing machines, photographic gear, household rooms set as the Chaffeys knew them, and a 1926 Garford fire engine that did duty in the town.

It is an easy, rewarding hour — wander the grove, read the irrigation story, and picture the gamble of promising orchards in a place with less than ten inches of rain a year. For the full tale of how that gamble played out, read the Chaffey story.