Echuca - Moama

Settlement

The site of Echuca Moama would have first been visited, or at least passed by, by Captain Charles Sturt, who in 1830 travelled the length of the Murrumbidgee into the Murray River and named it in honour of the then British Secretary of State for War and Colonies, Sir George Murray.

Moama was the first of the two settlements with James Maiden establishing what was known as 'Maidens Punt' in 1845. The settlement was renamed Moama in 1851.

Echuca was founded by an ex-convict named Henry Hopwood who in 1850 bought a small punt which he operated across the Murray River near the Campaspe junction. The small settlement was originally known as "Hopwood's Ferry" and was renamed Echuca as the town grew.

In November 1854 the Government Surveyor, Phillip Chauncy arrived at 'Hopwoods Ferry' to find approximately 26 people living at the settlement on the south bank of the Murray River.

While the settlers at Echuca treated the local Aborigines with relative kindness, their way of life was irrevocably changed by their relationship with the Europeans. Having already been decimated by smallpox in the late 1820s, in the 1850s many Aborigines developed a taste for European luxuries such as bread, tobacco, and most tragically, alcohol. They were relegated to the role of fringe-dwellers, living on the banks of the Murray, and occasionally entering into the European economy as fishermen and farm labourers and by selling their hand made possum rugs.