Best River Cruise Echuca Moama: Why the Paddle Steamer Melbourne Belongs on Your List
Echuca–Moama has long been the heart of Murray River tourism, drawing visitors with its historic port, red gum forests, and a slower pace of life that's hard to find elsewhere in regional Australia. But if you're searching for the best river cruise Echuca Moama has to offer, there's one experience that stands apart from the rest simply because of what it's sailing on: a genuine, working steam-driven paddle steamer with more than a century of history behind it. That vessel is the Paddle Steamer Melbourne , and in November 2025 it made a historic return to the Echuca–Moama region it first left 60 years earlier. A Paddle Steamer With a Story Worth Sailing For Most river cruise operators sell scenery, and the Murray River certainly delivers plenty of that. But the Paddle Steamer Melbourne offers something no replica or modern vessel can: authenticity. Construction on the Melbourne began in 1912 at Koondrook, with the hull launched on 17 July 1913, and its trial run ...