King River (Macquarie Harbor)

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King River
Data
location Tasmania ( Australia )
River system King River
Drain over King River → Southern Ocean
confluence at Marble Bluff ( Mount Sedgwick )
42 ° 0 ′ 45 ″  S , 145 ° 41 ′ 36 ″  E
Source height 243  m
muzzle Macquarie Harbor ( Southern Ocean ) at Lowana coordinates: 42 ° 11 '35 "  S , 145 ° 21' 13"  O 42 ° 11 '35 "  S , 145 ° 21' 13"  O
Mouth height 0  m
Height difference 243 m
Bottom slope 4.6 ‰
length 52.3 km
Left tributaries South Eldon River , Princess River , Nelson River , Governor River , Newall Creek, Thomas Currie Rivulet , Swift Creek
Right tributaries Eldon River , Lyell Comstock Creek, Tofft River , Queen River
Reservoirs flowed through Lake Burbury
Communities Teepookana, Lowana

The King River is a river in the western part of the Australian state of Tasmania .

geography

River course

The river arises from the Eldon River and the South Eldon River at the Marble Bluff settlement east of Mount Sedgwick , flows through the West Coast Range between Mount Huxley and Mount Jukes and flows into Macquarie Harbor at Lowana , 5 km south of Strahan .

The upper reaches of the King River lies in a valley that was previously filled with a glacier . You can still see traces of the glacier grinding on the upper slopes of the mountains. There are also a number of small glacial lakes on the north side of Mount Sedgwick. B. Lake Beatrice .

Tributaries with mouth heights

The Queen River is the main tributary of the King River and for over 100 years it carried overburden from the mines in Queenstown to the lower reaches of the King River. Through various actions by the mining company and the government, e.g. B. the construction of retention basins for the spoil, this was prevented. The lower reaches of the King River are so heavily filled with silt that a real delta formed in Macquarie Harbor. At least one mining company has already suggested that the silt be dredged and searched for ores that are still usable.

Reservoirs flowed through

Rack railway

The old cogwheel railway ( Abbot system ) to Queenstown ran on the north bank (between Teepookana and the Quarter Mile Bridge instead on the south bank) of the lower reaches of the King River .

In 1962, the builder and operator, the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company , left the line and dismantled it. At the beginning of 2002 it was rebuilt as a sight for tourists. The new route corresponds exactly to the old one and is now called the West Coast Wilderness Railway .

Dam construction

The valley on the upper reaches of the King River was first surveyed in 1917 by the Mount Lyell Company (predecessor of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company) to plan a dam. But it wasn't until the 1980s, after the failure of the Franklin Dam project , that Hydro Tasmania decided to build a dam there. At this dam, the King River was dammed into Lake Burbury , which is named after the first Australian-born governor of Tasmania, Stanley Burbury .

The old settlement at the wood mill on the former route of the Lyell Highway was flooded, as was a substantial part of the old route of the North Mount Lyell Railway between the settlements of Linda and Pillinger . The small town of Crotty with its melting furnaces also disappeared in the floods of the reservoir.

Web links

Commons : King River (Tasmania)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  • Patsy Crawford: King: Story of a River . Montpelier Press, 2000, ISBN 1-876597-02-X .
  • P. Davies, N. Mitchell and L. Barmuta: Mount Lyell remediation: the impact of historical mining operations at Mount Lyell on the water quality and biological health of the King and Queen River catchments, western Tasmania . Mount Lyell Remediation Research and Demonstration Program. Supervising Scientist Report 118, Supervising Scientist, Canberra (1996). ISBN 0-642-24317-4
  • Geoffrey Blainey: The Peaks of Lyell , 6th Edition. Edition, St. David's Park Publishing, Hobart 2000, ISBN 0-7246-2265-9 .
  • Lou Rae: The Abt Railway and Railways of the Lyell region . Lou Rae, Sandy Bay 2001, ISBN 0-9592098-7-5 .
  • Charles Whitham: Western Tasmania - A land of riches and beauty , Reprint 2003. Edition, Municipality of Queenstown, Queenstown 2003.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Map of King River, TAS . Bonzle.com