Cobdogla Steam Friends Society

These days the "Loveday Flyer" takes visitors around the Cobdogla Irrigation Museum, but in 1921 she was one of two 24” gauge locomotives that were used in the development of the area.

Cobdogla sits on a section of the Murray between Loxton and Waikerie about 5 km west of Barmera. During the development of the massive irrigation district in the first part the 20th century, Cobdogla became a hub of activity. The trains carried barrels of cement, sand, rolls of reinforcing wire and stone to the Loveday Pipe factory until the job was finished in 1922. After retirement in the grounds of the pumping station and then doing duty in a playground, she was restored in 1988 to add another role in a fascinating life of service. The Cobdogla Steam Friends, a group of dedicated volunteers, was formed in 1988 to keep the Museum going. The museum was started as the result of the state's 150th anniversary in 1986 when the old E&WS decided to restore the site. Much machinery pertinent to the development of the district was collected on the site of the old Cobdogla Pumping Station and certain items were chosen for restoration to working order.

The major item restored is called the Humphrey Pump - named after it's English designer Hubert Alfred Humphrey. A simple explanation is that the Humphrey used a controlled explosion of gas to work against a water column that resulted in the water being pumped from the Murray onto agricultural lands. "It has to be unique, there is only 13 built in the world and only one in the Southern Hemisphere. So as you can gather it's something special."

A few times a year the pump is fired up and witnesses say the earth really moves when Humphrey goes off. There's a few other ground shuddering machines at Cobdogla, like the Fowler Traction Engines built in England in 1920 and brought to South Australia. They are two of the four engines used as heavy artillery in the battle to irrigate the land. They are but two of the examples of the work of the Cobdogla Steam Friends Society. A current ongoing project is to recreate the railway line from Cobdogla to Loveday to provide a venue for the Society’s growing collection of historic locomotives.

The Museum also includes an impressive history of the area run by the National trust.