AT A GLANCE

Why go?

Where the Sturt Highway swings across the Murray River, a few kilometres upstream of Renmark, stands one of the region's most storied landmarks: the Paringa Bridge. Opened in January 1927, this steel vertical-lift crossing is the only lifting-span bridge on the Murray in South Australia, and one of the earliest bridges ever thrown over the river. Its most striking feature — a central section that can be hoisted to let tall vessels pass beneath — still works today, so a stop here is less about looking at an old structure than watching a piece of river history go about its daily business.↗↗↗

The bridge was built to serve two worlds at once: the railway that opened up the farming districts beyond Renmark, and the paddle-steamer traffic that once made the Murray the highway of the inland. With the trains long gone and the river now filled with houseboats, that dual purpose has quietly flipped — the old rail reservation is a shared pedestrian and cycle path, while the lift span exists mainly to move the leisure fleet up and down the water. It is a heritage-listed, still-working icon, and a favourite photo stop for travellers road-tripping between Adelaide and Sydney.