Murray

Geography

The Murray forms part of the 3,750 km (2,330 mi) long combined Murray–Darling river system that drains most of the inland of Victoria, New South Wales and the southern part of Queensland. The Murray carries only a small fraction of the water of comparably sized rivers in other parts of the world, and with great annual variability of its flow. It has dried up completely during extreme droughts on three occasions since official record-keeping began. More often, a sandbar formed at the mouth and stopped the flow.

The Murray is the border between New South Wales and Victoria – specifically at the top of the left bank (i.e. the Victorian side of the river).

History

Roonka Flat, near Blanchetown, was a site of occupation since at least 7000BC.

The first Europeans to encounter the river were Hamilton Hume and William Hovell, who crossed the river where Albury now stands in 1824: Hume named it the Hume River after his father. In 1830, Captain Charles Sturt reached the river after travelling down its tributary the Murrumbidgee River and named it the Murray River in honour of the then British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Sir George Murray, not realising it was the same river that Hume and Hovell had encountered further upstream.

Sturt continued down the remaining length of the Murray to finally reach Lake Alexandrina and the river's mouth. The vicinity of the Murray Mouth was explored more thoroughly by Captain Collet Barker in 1831.

Ancient history

Between 2.5 and 0.5 million years ago, the Murray terminated in a vast freshwater lake – Lake Bungunnia – formed by earth movements that blocked the river near Swan Reach. At its maximum extent, Lake Bungunnia covered 33,000 km2 (12,741 sq mi), extending to near the Menindee Lakes in the north and to near Boundary Bend in the south. The draining of Lake Bungunnia occurred approximately 600,000 years ago.

Deep clays deposited by the lake are evident in cliffs around Chowilla in South Australia. Considerably higher rainfall would have been required to keep such a lake full; the draining of Lake Bungunnia appears to have marked the end of a wet phase in the history of the Murray–Darling Basin and the onset of widespread arid conditions similar to today.