Darling River

Darling River, river, longest member of the Murray–Darling river system in Australia; it rises in several headstreams in the Great Dividing Range (Eastern Highlands), near the New South Wales–Queensland border, not far from the east coast, and flows generally southwest across New South Wales for 1,702 miles (2,739 km) to join the Murray at Wentworth (on the Victoria border), 150 miles from the Murray’s mouth in South Australia.

The main source of the Darling is usually considered to be the Severn, which becomes successively the Dumaresq, Macintyre, Barwon, and, finally, the Darling. Discharge of the lower tributaries (Culgoa, Warrego, Paroo, Gwydir, Namoi, Macquarie, and Bogan) of the main stream fluctuates as a result of droughts and floods. Because much of the Darling’s course runs through extensive saltbush pastures, receiving an average of less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain annually, the river often loses more water by evaporation than is gained from its tributaries, many of which sometimes fail to reach the main stream. There are instances in which distributaries leave the main stream and disappear in inland basins. Several, however, flow into salt flats and in wet years emerge to rejoin the parent stream. The Great Anabranch (which leaves below the Menindee Lakes to join the Murray some 300 miles later) and the Talyawalka Anabranch (which leaves the main stem near Wilcannia to rejoin the Darling roughly 80 miles downstream near Menindee) are examples of these anastomosing distributaries (i.e., streams that leave and link up again with the main river). The entire Darling system drains a 250,000-square-mile (650,000-square-km) basin with an average annual discharge of 3,600 cubic feet (102 cubic metres) per second at Menindee. The river has an average gradient of 1 inch to the mile.

Headwaters of the Darling were gradually colonized by pastoralists from 1815 onward. In 1828 the explorer Charles Sturt was dispatched by the governor of New South Wales, Sir Ralph Darling, to investigate the lower course of the Macquarie River. He chanced first upon the Bogan and then, early in 1829, the Darling main stream from the Barwon–Culgoa confluence. In the latter part of the 19th century, the river was of importance to navigation, but waterborne traffic has long been superseded by the railway.

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The 10-inch winter rainfall line separates the Darling Basin into a western arid or semiarid (steppe) pastoral region and an eastern humid farming portion. The 125,000 square miles of the pastoral region are owned almost exclusively by wool growers with large holdings suited to grazing. Agriculture is possible only in small irrigated areas along the Darling; there is fodder cropping at Wilcannia, Bourke, and Brewarrina and grape and citrus farming further south in the Mallee region. Several engineering projects have given the drainage area great potential for development. The Darling River Weirs Act of 1945 authorized construction of a series of dams to impound water in reservoirs that provide town water and support irrigation. The Menindee Lakes Storage Scheme, completed in 1960, has created reservoirs with 1,454,000 acre-feet (1,794,000,000 cubic metres) of water for irrigation and domestic use; by regulating the flow in the Lower Murray, the system also provides a more dependable irrigation supply in South Australia. On the coastal tablelands and western slopes, a system of dams controls floods and allows for diversified agriculture and closer settlement than on the drier western plains.