Australia is the sixth largest country in the world, with a land area of 7.69 million square kilometers, but it is a country with few rivers. As I learned in geography class, there is only one river in Australia, called the Murray, which is the only fully developed water system in Australia.
Map of Australia, Murray River in the southeast
There are other rivers that are either very short or seasonal, only flowing when it rains and when the snow melts, and the rest are dry and dehydrated. As a result, the Murray River is the only river in Australia in the true sense of the word, and also includes tributaries of the Murray River, the largest of which is called the Darling River, also commonly known as the Murray-Darling River, which is the mother river of Australia.
The main stream of the Murray River is 2,589 km long, originating in the Great Dividing Range in southeastern Australia and empties into the Great Australian Gulf in the Indian Ocean. The Darling River is the longest tributary of the Murray River, originating in the western foothills of the New England Mountains, and if it is sourced by the Darling River, the Murray River is 3,719 kilometers long.
Map of the location of the Murray River and the Darling River
Murray River
The 1 million square kilometres of Murray-Darling Basin, where these two rivers pass through form the most important agricultural irrigation area in Australia and the equivalent of Australia's granary. Wheat and corn are mainly cultivated in the area, grapes are also grown to develop the wine industry, and cattle and sheep are raised to develop animal husbandry. There are also several major cities in the Murray-Darling Basin, including Albury, Ecuka, Swanhill, Renmark, and Murray Bridge, have you heard of these places?
Map of the Murray River Basin
Compared with Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Canberra, the cities in the Murray-Darling Basin are less famous, but this land has a unique water advantage in Australia. Australia is an arid country, with a third of the country receiving less than 200 mm of rainfall a year, which is similar to the desert in the northwest of the continent.
Arid region of Australia
The remaining two-thirds of Australia receives about 500 millimetres of precipitation a year, about the same as the northern part of the continent. In addition, Australia's rainfall is unstable, which has caused many lands to be affected by drought for a long time, and even the water volume in the Murray River basin has fluctuated greatly. It can be said that except for the 500 kilometers upstream of the Murray River, the flow of the rest of the river is relatively small, and some sections of the river often dry up.
Originally, the middle and lower reaches of the Murray River did not have any water resource advantages, but in order to stabilize the water source, Australia launched the Snow River-Murray River water diversion project decades ago. It took 25 years and $800 million to complete the water diversion project.
Snow River-Murray River Water Diversion Project
The Snow River-Murray River Water Transfer Project begins at the Snow River in the upper reaches of the Murray River, which is located on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range and is fed by snow from the high mountains. Due to the high altitude and low temperature on the mountain, the evaporation of snow melt water is small, which is conducive to storing water on the snow mountain, so the Snow River-Murray River water diversion project can be implemented.
The diversion project is divided into the Snow River-Timert River Water Transfer Project in the north and the Snow River-Murray River Water Transfer Project in the south, and then the two water diversion projects are connected into a unified water diversion system through reservoirs and tunnels. A total of 2 water lifting stations, 7 hydropower stations, 16 dams, 80 km of pipelines, 145 km of tunnels and hundreds of km of transmission lines have been built for irrigation and hydroelectric power.
Murray River in Australia
The Murray-Darling Basin, which brings water, has become Australia's cornucopia, thanks to the Murray River. Without the Murray River, it's hard to imagine what Australia would be, so wherever it is, protecting the river is protecting our home.