Everything about The Gilbert-einasleigh River totally explained
The
Gilbert-Einasleigh River is one of the largest river systems in northern
Australia. It is located in north-central
Queensland, between the
Flinders River and the
Mitchell River. Although it's a seasonal stream and discharge can vary greatly depending on the intensity of the
monsoon, the Gilbert-Einasleigh has the sixth-highest discharge of any river in Australia, about equal to that of the
Potomac in North America. In a very wet "wet" season, however, the discharge can be as large as that of the
Fraser River in Canada, and in a dry "wet" like that of 1951/1952, the discharge can be as little as
one tenth the long term mean. It is estimated that runoff from the Gilbert-Einasleigh system totals about 2.2 percent of the total runoff from Australia.
Both the Gilbert and Einasleigh Rivers rise in ancient uplands to the west of the
Atherton Tableland in northern Queensland. The two streams have their sources very close to each other but they begin by diverging as they flow into lower-lying country to the west, the Gilbert anticlockwise and the Einasleigh clockwise. Their almost circular flow takes them eventually together where they join almost due east of
Normanton and then flow in a west-northwesterly direction to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The only major tributary is the
Etheridge River which joins the two main stems at a point very close to their convergence. From this point on, the river flows into a vast estuarine delta that largely consists of tidal flats and
mangrove swamps which flood during the "wet" season.
The climate of the basin is tropical, with annual rainfall generally around 800
mm (31-32 inches). Almost all the annual rainfall occurs between December and March: the months from May to September are rainless in over 60 percent of years (over 80 percent for August). Rainfall is highly variable due to monsoon variability and occasional severe
cyclones: in a wet season like 1973/1974 or 1999/2000 it can exceed 1800mm (70 inches), but in the almost nonexistent wet season of 1951/1952 it was as low as 300mm (12 inches) over much of the basin.
Because the river is much too erratic for
hydroelectricity to be viable and the soils are exceedingly infertile - generally
ironstone gravels or kaolinitic clays - the Gilbert-Einasleigh is one of the relatively few completely free-flowing river systems of its size or greater in the world. Most of the basin is natural grassland used for grazing
cattle at the extremely low densities permissible with the very low nutritive qualities of the feed available: the population is no more than one thousand or one person for over 40 square kilometres. In the upper reaches soils are more fertile red cracking clays but erode too easily under the erratic rainfall for cropping to be a likely prospect even with
groundwater available.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gilbert-einasleigh River'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://gilbert-einasleigh_river.totallyexplained.com">Gilbert-Einasleigh River Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
