Murray River (Western Australia)

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Murray River
Bridge over the Murray River in Pinjarra (approx. 1900-1910)

Bridge over the Murray River in Pinjarra (approx. 1900-1910)

Data
location Western Australia , Australia
River system Murray River
Drain over Murray River → Peel-Harvey Estuary  → Indian Ocean
source Mount Keats ( Darling Range ), confluence of the Hotham and Williams Rivers
32 ° 58 ′ 32 ″  S , 116 ° 23 ′ 53 ″  E
Source height 187  m
muzzle Peel-Harvey Estuary near Mandurah Coordinates: 32 ° 35 ′ 0 ″  S , 115 ° 46 ′ 17 ″  E 32 ° 35 ′ 0 ″  S , 115 ° 46 ′ 17 ″  E.
Mouth height 0  m
Height difference 187 m
Bottom slope 1.4 ‰
length 134 km
Left tributaries Williams River , Chalk Brook, Big Brook
Right tributaries Hotham River , Long Gully, Howse Brook, Yarragil Brook, Swamp Oak Brook, Marrinup Brook, Dandalup River
Medium-sized cities Pinjarra , Mandurah
Communities Nanga

The Murray River is a river in the southwest of the Australian state of Western Australia .

The river played an essential role in the expansion of Aboriginal settlements south of Perth after the arrival of British settlers in the Swan River Colony in 1829.

geography

The Murray River rises on the northern slopes of Mount Keats in the Darling Range . From there it flows north through Lane Poole Conservation Reserve to turn west 3 miles south of Dwellingup . On the South Western Highway , about 7 km north of Waroona , his way leads him north again, along the highway to Pinjarra .

It is one of the few larger rivers near Perth that does not have a reservoir for drinking water supply. Its catchment area is largely in the Wheatbelt region , where in the east at Pingelly there is only an average of 450 mm / year of rain and in the west in the Darling Range around Dwellingup an average of up to 1300 mm / year of rain falls.

The Murray River flows through the densely forested areas of the Darling Range with high annual rainfall and then reaches the town of Pinjarra. Below Pinjarra, the river flows through a sandy plain. It is also navigable there. At Mandurah it flows into the Peel Inlet and thus into the Indian Ocean .

The South Yunderup and North Yunderup canals lie a little upstream of the estuary .

Tributaries with mouth heights

  • Hotham River - 184 m
  • Williams River - 184 m
  • Long Gully - 174 m
  • Chalk Brook - 171 m
  • Howse Brook - 168 m
  • Big Brook - 164 m
  • Yarragil Brook - 159 m
  • Swamp Oak Brook - 147 m
  • Marrinup Brook - 18 m
  • Dandalup River - 8 m

history

The first European expedition to the area was led by Captain John Currie of HMS Challenger in July 1829 and accompanied by botanist James Drummond . The group marched a little inland from today's Rockingham and discovered a river in the distance after climbing a small hill near today's Baldivis . This river was later called the Serpentine River . It lies north of the Murray River and was confused with it for some time, but what it was understood later that year.

In November, Dr. Alexander Collie , Lieutenant William Preston and their crew from HMS Sulfur with two whaling boats out of Cockburn Sound and crossed the sand threshold at what is now Mandurah at noon on November 17, 1829. There they stayed overnight and the next day drove south up the Peel-Harvey Estuary to the mouth of the Harvey River , where they met friendly Aborigines.

Because of the strong winds, they sailed north out of the estuary without exploring its east coast, where the Murray River flows into. The group then exited the lagoon over the sand threshold and sailed along the coast to the mouths of the Collie and Preston Rivers and down to Leschenault Inlet before returning to the Peel-Harvey Estuary on November 28, 1829. The boats traveled up the Murray River about two miles and then returned to Fremantle after a 12-day trip .

This was the first real encounter with the Murray River, the Governor James Stirling of the Secretary of State in the Colonial Office in London , Sir George Murray , named.

A few months later, Swan River settlers began exploring the river and securing land on its banks.

Thomas Peel

Thomas Peel had left Great Britain with the promise that if he and 400 settlers arrived in Fremantle in early November 1829, 1000 km² of land would be granted that stretched from the south bank of the Swan River to Cockburn Sound. But since he arrived six weeks late and only 169 settlers, Governor Stirling withdrew his offer and gave the land to settlers who were already established. Peel was offered alternatively the land from Woodman Point to the north bank of the Murray River and from the sea to the Darling Range .

Peel's remaining settlers arrived there a little later and initially settled in Clarence before moving to what is now Mandurah, which they called Peeltown .

Despite many problems for the settlers, the settlement expanded and at the end of 1830 the city of Pinjarra was founded. The Murray River was navigable until about there. There was also a natural ford at nearby Oakley Brook.

More land was settled on the south bank of the Murray River, but this represented the southern limit of the settlement area, also because there were increasing conflicts with the Aborigines residing there. These conflicts culminated in the terrible Pinjarra massacre in October 1834, when white settlers killed up to 40 Noongar of the Pindjarub tribe . The massacre was followed by a tribal raid from the Murray River on the city of Perth. The following year a formal peace treaty was signed between the Noongars from the Murray River, those from the Swan River and the white settlers.

This resulted in relative peace and the settlements around Pinjarra continued to grow. The opening of the Perth to Bunbury railway in 1893 further spurred settlement activity.

Soon after the settlers began to set up an agriculture, they found that the lower reaches of the river suffered badly from annual floods, which were due to the small gradient between the edge of the mountain and the estuary - a distance of about 40 km . Extensive deforestation of the foothills, which otherwise could have absorbed the excess water, made the problem even worse. The settlers were dealing with a gigantic marshland that was impassable for many months every year.

From 1900 to around the end of the Second World War , joint efforts were made to drain the flood-prone areas. Today, a third of the land in the Peel-Harvey catchment area is no more than 100 meters from a flood ditch, creek or river.

See also

Web links

swell

  • Anne Brearley: Ernest Hodgkin's Swanland: estuaries and coastal lagoons of South-western Australia . University of Western Australia Press for the Ernest Hodgkin Trust for Estuary Education and Research and National Trust of Australia (WA) ,, Crawley, WA 2005, ISBN 1-920694-38-2 .
  • K. Bradby: Peel-Harvey . Greening the Catchment Taskforce, 1997, ISBN 0-7309-8041-3 .
  • CT Stannage (Editor): A New History of Western Australia - the First Western Australians . UWA Press, 1981.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Map of Murray River, WA . Bonzle.com
  2. ^ Steve Parish: Australian Touring Atlas . Steve Parish Publishing Pty. Ltd. Archerfield QLD (2007). ISBN 978174193232-4 . P. 78