The Darling River, Australia’s longest, runs 2,740 kms through Outback NSW and combined with the Murray River (2530kms) and the Murrumbidgee (1690km) make up the Murray Darling Basin which covers about 14% of Australia’s total area (and 75% of NSW).
The upper reaches of the Darling are fed but other rivers and tributaries that bring water down from the Darling Downs and the Carnarvon range in Queensland.
The Murray River starts it run from the east coast high up in the Great Dividing Range near Mt Kosciuszko (2228m), bringing the winter rain and spring snow melt westward though the Riverina; joining with the Murrumbidgee (with Lachlan river) near Balranald and then the Darling River at Wentworth. From the confluence of the two mighty rivers it continues through South Australia to Lake Alexandria and into the Great Australian Bight – The Southern Ocean.
Not surprisingly, such an extensive river system has had a significant impact on essence of Australia and in particularly the Indigenous population. For over 50,000 years, Aboriginal people have used the river system and the surrounding area for as a source of food and cultural relevance. The ‘land’ is central to Aboriginal culture and according to the ‘Dreaming’; the river resulted from the tracks of a great ancestor pursuing ‘Pondi’ (The Murray Cod) from the interior of NSW, along its many tributaries towards Lake Alexandria. The water course was laid down as a result of this pursuit. It is estimated that there are around 10,000 known Aboriginal sites throughout the Murray Darling basin.
To the Europeans, the rivers created in important transport network to bring supplies to the interior and enabling primary production (namely wool) transported to a Adelaide and then onto Europe. The seasonality of the flow was always going to be a problem and in such a land of extremes – floods and droughts – and the advent of rail, reduced the river’s significance as a transport mode
