RIVER SYSTEMS of South Eastern Australia

from Graham on behalf of Barry:

Barry,

we prepared this information but forgot to post it. It may be of interest to the agriculturalists back home.

Last Saturday 7/3 we visited Spring Creek Mountain Cafe and Queen Mary Falls. This region is regarded as 'The Head' meaning the head of the Condamine River that starts at the point where the rivers of the Great Dividing Range either flow East to the coast, (100 km or so), OR start to travel WEST and/or North from the Ranges to create and contribute to the longest river system in Australia. Technically the head of the Condamine River starts at Mt Superbus - the mountain seen as we were having lunch at the cafe. Refer earlier Blog posted Sunday 8/3.

The images below show the basic main rivers such as Condamine (Killarney, Warwick, West of Toowoomba, then into the Balonne River, and the Darling River, eventually the Murray/Darling becomes the Murray River and having crossed Queensland, New South Wales , into Victoria and South Australia, reaches the sea at the Southern coast of Australia in South Australia.

The Darling River is said to be 1,472 km long, and 2844 km including 'contigouos tributaries'. Then there is the distance to the coast after it meets with the Murray River.

When the Condamine floods it spreads out over a wide area depositing furtile soils that have created the rich farming area of The Darling Downs. You will see the Balonne River when you visit St George next week and the Condamine passes just South of Chinchilla.

Note the rivers and obviously the many smaller tributaries all flowing WEST from the ranges of Eastern Australia.

The following map shows the land mass drained by the Murray/Darling rivers system.