The stretch of the Murray where the stories come out at night

By Earth to Sea News · August 2026

Old eucalypts, an inland beach and a night walk through Bangerang country, on the quiet stretch of the Murray between Cobram and Tocumwal.

This is the Murray between Yarrawonga and the Barmah Narrows, on Yorta Yorta and Bangerang country, and the whole of it runs slow. Downstream sits the largest river red gum forest in the world, the Barmah and Murray Valley parks facing each other across the water. Upstream of that the river winds between old trees and long sandbars, and you can follow it town by town.

Start at Cobram, where Thompsons Beach is billed as the largest inland beach in the country, a proper curve of river sand shaded by red gums through the day and floodlit into the evening, where people swim and paddle and nobody is in much of a hurry. You can walk around Quinn Island, hire a canoe, or simply sit under trees that were old before any of this was mapped. Barooga sits straight across the water on the New South Wales side.

Take the back roads on the Victorian side and you will find the one near Bearii, where the eucalypts lean in from both sides until they meet overhead and you are driving through a green tunnel with the Murray somewhere off to your right.

Keep going downstream and you come to Tocumwal, and if you time it for dusk the river goes completely still. Red gums crowd both banks, the light turns the colour of the inside of a shell, and for a few minutes the water holds the entire sky. Below here the river narrows and slips away into the red gum forest, and that is a whole other day.

Then it gets dark, and back upstream at Barooga the country starts telling its own stories. Bullanginya Dreaming is a 1.8 kilometre night walk along the banks of Bullanginya Lagoon, twelve light activations spread through forty acres of bush, each one built from the artwork of Bangerang artist Rebecca Atkinson. “My artwork tells a story, whether it’s about scar trees, birthing trees, or bush medicine,” she says. “It tells the story of how we are all connected to the world around us.” It takes an hour or so to walk, more if you linger, and in June this year it grew again: five holographic installations called Echoes of Bullanginya, bringing Bangerang totems up out of the landscape as you pass. “I always try to connect with emotions,” says creative director Juan Zubiaga. “For me, it’s really important that people remember.” Some two and a half thousand people have walked it so far, and a share of what they spend goes back to the Bangerang community. Come for the river and the old trees. Stay for the night the trees start talking back.