Why a Booktrail?
1900s – The Murray River in Australia is its longest river. Rising in the Australian Alps, it forms the border between New South Wales and Victoria, and for one woman it is life itself….
All the Rivers Run
What you need to know before your trail
Victorian Australia
This is the story of Delie a twelve year old orphan as she grows and gets married and becomes a mother. This is the story of the Murray River which mirrors Delie’s journey from a young spring to a steady river and then finally its release into the sea. Delie’s life has always been on or near the river and so it is as much a part of her as it is the landscape. And life has been one long meandering course of unexpected events, heartbreak and twists and turns that could make or break a person’s spirit.
One woman and her river – destines so bound together as one woman struggles in a man’s world, paddling with only her spirit to guide her.
Travel Guide
A journey not just along the Murray river but also across the landscape and history of Australia at the turn of the century.
Philadelphia Gordon or Delie as she is known as in the book has always dreamed of becoming a famous artist. Having lost her parents at an early age and then set to her aunt and uncle in Australia, this landscape is a new and uncharted territory for her in more ways than one but she keeps moving forward like the Murray River itself.
“It is like life dissolved in time: always passing away , yet endlessly renewed; forever changing, yet eternally the same. Growing more complex the further it travels…..”
To a young girl with dreams and aspirations, the river symbolises freedom and a will of her own, She wants to be the artist she dreams of, as well as a mother. What she becomes is the first known riverboat skipper, a female one no less in an age where midwestern pioneer life was at its peak.
Philadelphia Gordon, starts her new life off the coast of Victoria in 1890. Spending most of her life around the city of Echuca on the Murray River, her life is one torn between paddle steamer Brenton Edwards and the PS Philadelphia. The adventures aboard the paddle steamer and the development of the river boat trade cast an illuminating light on life in Australia at that time.
However, there is also the life in Melbourne as her artistic talents take her another way entirely…
Where Next?
