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Morgan, SA.

The site of Morgan was originally known as North West Bend, the Great Bend or the Great Elbow because of the major bend in the Murray at that point. In the 1850s and 1860s this was where overlanders bound for Adelaide with stock left the Murray and headed overland with their sheep.

By the late 1870s Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia were competing for trade on the Murray River; in those years river traffic stopped each year when water drained away from the river leaving insufficient depth of water until rains came upstream, usually in the next rainy season. South Australia had the advantage that useful water remained longer in the lower Murray than in Victoria and New South Wales, but this advantage was offset by the time needed, as well as the additional cost, of unloading from river vessels at the port of Goolwa for carriage by bullock drays to the rail head at Strathalbyn or to ocean-going vessels at Victor Harbor.

Morgan was developed by the South Australian government as a new river port with a direct rail connection to Adelaide; this new port would compete with Echuca and was intended to capture more of the river trade, especially from properties and settlements along the Darling River. The town was surveyed in 1878 and in April of that year the first steam locomotive made a test run from Adelaide on the new railway line. Within a few years six trains a day were running between Morgan and Adelaide and the five steam cranes on the wharf were operating 24 hours a day.

Eventually the spread of the more reliable railway took business away from the river. Then the river ports, such as Morgan, sank into obscurity.

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