William Richard Randell was only 13 years old when he arrived in Adelaide with his father. Whilst working at his father’s flour mill in Gumeracha, and looking after cattle on the station, he dreamed of building a paddle steamer.
Gold had been discovered in a creek near Bathurst by Edward Edmond Hardgraves and John Lister, and this encouraged river trading. More gold was discovered in Victoria, but William’s father thought that he and his brothers (Samuel, John, Thomas and Elliott) should stay with what they knew best and continue working at the flour mill.
Despite his father’s wishes, William and his brother Thomas George, engaged a carpenter and built the frame of a hull. This was taken by bullock dray thirty miles over the hills to the northern bank of Reedy Creek Station where it was completed. Timber for the completion of the boat, now called ‘Mary Ann’ after William’s mother, was cut from Red Gum in the Kenton Valley. The boiler was built by the blacksmith who worked at the flour mill.
The Mary Ann measured 55 feet long and 9 feet wide with a boiler 6 feet 9 inches long. It cost £1800. The beam engine was 7 to 8 horsepower with 10 inch cylinders made by Mr Claus Gehlkin, a German engineer at Hindmarsh. The boiler, being square, was an irregular design and proved to be very dangerous. Chains, with wedges beneath, were put round the boiler because it expanded alarmingly while under pressure.
The Mary Ann’s first trial run was on the 19th of February 1853, making it the first steamer on the River Murray. It went down river to John Baker’s Wall Station using steam and sail. The return journey (12 miles each way) took four hours. This allowed for the strong winds and river currents as well as a stop for fuel.
Heavily loaded with flour and other cargo intended for the goldfields, William Richard and his brothers were forced to turn back by a sand bar near Lake Bonney on their first trip up river in March 1853, trying again in August when the River rose. Also ready for the rise was Captain Francis Cadell, who with the financial backing from William Younghusband, had commissioned a new steamer in Sydney, the Lady Augusta, which was sailed through the Murray Mouth on 16 August 1853. Cadell had more than a year earlier come to an alternative agreement with the South Australian Government, where he was to receive subsidies and financial bonuses to open commercial navigation of the River. With an official party on board, including the Governor, the Lady Augusta with her Goolwa built barge Eureka, departed Goolwa on 25 August, passing the Mary Ann when she was three days from Swan Hill. While Cadell travelled 150 miles beyond Swan Hill before returning with a cargo of wool, Randell travelled further, reaching Maiden’s Punt (Echuca) at the junction of the Campaspe River, within 50 miles of the Bendigo diggings.