Even though most Australians are not allowed to cross state borders at this time, I have a special exemption and today I can be in one state and then a few minutes later, in another!
Today I am enjoying a leisurely ride down a river that Rises high in the mountains of one state and empties itself into the sea 2520 kilometres later, making it the third longest navigable river in the world, after the Amazon and Nile. It is the 16th longest river in the whole world.
On that journey the water passes through 4 major dams, 16 storage weirs and 15 navigable locks. Along with its tributaries it is part of the third largest water catchment on earth providing the major domestic water supply for over 1.5 million households.
Its drainage area is one of the largest in the world and certainly the largest in AUstralia, draining most of inland Victoria, New South Wales, and southern Queensland from the western side of the Great Australian Divide. It has remained in virtually the same place for millions of years, with the valleys that cradle it being formed 40 000 000 years ago.
Indigenous people have lived on its banks and relied on it for at least 40 000 years, with many groups calling its banks home. They believed that in the Dreamtime, it was just a creek until Ngurunderi chased a large fish, a fish so large that the movement of its tail made waves that made it wider and wider. When that fish swam into a lake near the river's mouth and disappeared, Ngurunderi gave up the chase but left a long, bountiful river as his legacy. Fish and shellfish were the main food. Men did the hunting with spears or nets as well as dams. Flocks of ducks, pelicans, black swans and other water birds were trapped in the nets that they strung across the creeks.
The river is known to indigenous peoples as Millewa or Tongala.
It was first discovered by European explorers Hamilton H. Hume and William H. Hovell in 1824 but it wasn't until five years later, however, that Charles Sturt navigated down the Murrumbidgee to encounter this river and named it after a British soldier and politician.
From 1853 it became the water highway that opened up much of the inland of this country, with paddle steamers used to carry wool, wheat, and other goods up and down the river system allowing settlement and prosperity. However the development of railways meant that it's use for that declined quickly.
Nowadays the river is under threat from various sources. It contains a high salt content, meaning that it has an impact on all who use it. The intense pressure placed on it from overuse is also a concern which can lead to erosion and overall poor water quality and its management to meet the needs of all those who want to draw on it is complex and controversial.
Where am I?
