I just came into this thread, and noticed Joe Offer's posting that suggests a meaning for "wander by the river" might be suicide.

I was talking to Kevin Baker (a fine songwriter down Wollongong way) a few years ago, and he mentioned some social research he had done in the Riverina district of New South Wales. He had come across the expression "walking into the dam" as a euphemism for suicide in the area. This had developed because drowning oeself in a farm dam was a method used in a number of suicides.

Is there any more information on the "wander by the river" expression?