PS Daisy: Mannum becomes home to SA’s oldest paddlesteamer
A mechanically minded 22-year-old has become the youngest member of South Australia’s Wooden Boat Association with his purchase of a 129-year-old riverboat.
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Not every 22-year-old wants to spend his life savings on a 19th-century paddle steamer, but Luke Carpenter is not your average.
About 100 people lined the banks of the River Murray at Mannum late last month as Mr Carpenter pulled up at Mary Ann Reserve in his new purchase, the PS Daisy, accompanied by a flotilla of other steamers and wooden boats.
Cameras clicked and onlookers cheered as he threw a rope and extended a plank onto the shore.
The Daisy is now the oldest paddle steamer based in South Australia, having been built at Echuca in 1896 – one year before the previous record-holder, the PS Marion.
Its skipper is the youngest member of the Wooden Boat Association of SA.
“Insanity,” Mr Carpenter said about his decision to buy the heritage vessel.
“Wooden boats, paddle boats in general, have been a passion of mine since I was a kid.
“The opportunity to manage one myself was too good to pass up.”
He had been around the river his whole life, he said, despite hailing from Adelaide; and spent several years volunteering aboard the Marion, the tourist vessel which runs cruises out of Mannum Dock Museum.
It took Mr Carpenter, his girlfriend Maya Morris and a team of helpers 11 days to bring the Daisy 680 kilometres down the river from her former home at Wentworth, New South Wales.
They burned through 2500 litres of sump oil and two tonnes of firewood along the way.
The boat had been taken out only once in the past five years: at the Wentworth Junction Rally last July.
As fate would have it, Mr Carpenter was there.
He got talking to her former owner, and the rest is history.
Ms Morris said it had taken a bit of convincing to get her on board with the purchase.
After all, the couple could have used their cash putting a deposit on a house; those are getting more expensive all the time.
But again: how many 20-somethings get to captain their own riverboat?
“We’re young,” she said.
“We can both work on it and get it going so that when we’re older we can finally relax.”
Mr Carpenter hoped to keep restoring the Daisy, and to build a cabin on the back and make her a bit more comfortable.
The hot couple of nights he and his crew spent lying in swags on the deck, only metres away from the boat’s enormous steam engine, were not luxurious.
Still, he dreamed of cruising up and down the Murray, and perhaps up to Morgan for an event in June.
“There’s worse things to spend your money on,” he said with a grin.
For now, the Daisy will be moored at Mannum, ready to bloom again.
