Hero Unearthed
PS Hero built in 1874 in Echuca. She had a full life as a paddle steamer on the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Darling rivers. She was burnt to the water line in 1957 abandoned. 40 years later she was raised and restored to the beautiful paddle steamer she is today. This is her story.
In photographs and words we tell the story of Hero’s years of work as a paddle steamer pulling barges with wheat, wool and wood on board. She rescued cattle from the floods, carried parliamentarians on river inspection. For the 1939-1945 war she carted wool from the forests to the rail to keep the fires burning in Melbourne.
Abandoned after a fire she spent nearly 40 years under water gradually sinking lower into the mud at Boundary Bend between Swan Hill and Robinvale
In 1998 an Echuca business man was caught up in the spell of the history of the river and the Hero.
Over a period of 8 years the best shipwrights on the Murray river worked on her and we now have a paddle steamer that lives up to the article in the Riverine Herald in October 1874, “She is as pretty a little steamer as ever floated on the river. Her lines resemble those of a yacht and give her a rakish appearance as she sits on the water.”