Murray River
The Murray River is Australia's second-longest river in its own right (the longest being its tributary the Darling). The 3370 kilometre long combined Murray-Darling river system drains most of inland Victoria, New South Wales, and southern Queensland. The 2500-kilometer Murray proper rises in the Australian Alps, draining the western side of Australia's highest mountains. Carrying only a small fraction of the water of comparably-sized rivers in other parts of the world, and with a great annual variability of its flow, in its natural state it has even been known to dry up completely in drought years. For most of its length, the Murray meanders its way across Australia's inland plains, forming the border between New South Wales and Victoria as it wanders to the northwest, before turning south for its final 500 kilometres or so into South Australia. It supplies much of Adelaide's domestic water supply.
The first Europeans to see the river were the explorers Hume and Hovell in 1824 and they named it the Hume river. In 1830 Captain Charles Sturt reached the river after travelling down its tributary the Murrumbidgee River and gave it the name the Murray, not realising it was the same river that Hume and Hovell had encountered further upstream. The name was given in honour of the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies Sir George Murray. Sturt continued down the remaining length of the Murray to finally reach Lake Alexandrina and the river's mouth.
In the 19th century the river used to support a substantial commercial steamboat trade, but the unreliable levels made it impossible for boats to compete with the railways and later road transport. However, the river still carries pleasure boats along its entire length. During the 20th century a large number of dams were constructed in the river's headwaters, including the Hume Dam, Dartmouth Dam, and the complex dam and pipeline system of the Snowy Mountains Scheme. These dams inverted the patterns of the river's natural flow from the original winter-spring flood and summer-autumn dry to the present low level through winter and higher during summer. These changes ensured the availability of water for irrigation and made the Murray Valley Australia's most productive agricultural region, but have seriously disrupted the life cycles of many ecosystems both inside and outside the river, and the irrigation has led to dryland salinity that now threatens the agricultural industries.
The disruption of the river's natural flow, runoff from agriculture, and the introduction of pest species like the European Carp has led to serious environmental damage along the river's length and to concerns that the river (and thus Adelaide's water and the irrigation water) will be unusably salty in the medium to long term. Efforts to alleviate the problems proceed but political infighting between various interest groups stalls progress.
Major tributaries
Dams/Lakes
Murray River Population Centres
Oral History
In 2004 ABC radio presenter Phillip Adams interviewed a number of people who lived along the river in a feature series on the radio program Late Night Live. The series was researched and produced by Annabelle Quince.