Mountains and rivers in Australia

Public utility organization overall average school named E. Izatullaeva

REPORT

Subject: Mountains and rivers in Australia

Worked by: ___________________________

Accepted by:___________________________

Turkestan – 2016

Mountains and rivers in Australia

Australia is a very flat continent where the average elevation is just 330 metres, the lowest in the world. What Australia lacks in height is more that made up for in the variety, geological age and unique appearance of its mountains and rocky outcrops - some of the oldest and most interesting exposed rocks in the world.

The highest point in Australia is Mount Kosciuszko (named by Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki in 1840 after the Polish patriot and democratic leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko) in New South Wales, at 2,228 metres above sea level. Mount Kosciuszko is part of the Great Dividing Range.

The Great Dividing Range

The Blue Mountains, New South Wales. Image courtesy of Tourism New South Wales

The Great Dividing Range is one of Australia's most important geographical features. It divides the east coast from the inland and has a major influence on our climate, population spread and settlement patterns, economics and agriculture. It is home to an amazing array of plants and animals that don't exist anywhere else on earth. It is the source of our longest rivers and our highest mountains.

The range runs parallel to the east cost of Australia, from Cape York in the North to Western Victoria in the south. Tasmania, Australia's island state which lies even further south, is also a part of this massive and ancient mountain range.

The Great Dividing Range has it origins many millions of years ago when the continents of earth were fused together as the Gondwana land mass. A huge uplift in the earth's crust occurred over millions of years, during the Pliocene and the Pleistocene Epochs (between 5.4 million to 10,000 years ago). This was just after the extinction of the dinosaurs and during the time that modern humans first appeared.

As the ranges eroded over millions of years, the high mountain tops became islands. Populations of animal species which used to live across large areas became concentrated on the mountains and groups became isolated from each other. Over many thousands of years, this isolation meant that species evolved independently and this led to many variations in species.

The ranges are also home to some amazing species of animals and plants that are survivors of Gondwana. The Wollemi Pine, recently found growing in a gorge of the Blue Mountains, is a living dinosaur of the plant world. Twenty-three of the 35 known species of the carab beetle live on just one mountain top in northern Queensland, at the top of the Great Dividing Range.

Mount Augustus

Mount Augustus, Western Australia. Photograph by Malcolm Wells.

The visible portion of the sandstone and conglomerate structure which makes up Mount Augustus, is twice the size of Uluru. Sitting on a bedrock of granite, the mountain stands 858 metres above the surrounding plain and 1105 metres above sea level and is eight kilometres long. It can be seen clearly from 160 kilometres away and is sometimes described as the world's largest monocline, part of Mount Augustus National Park.

It is estimated that the rock of the mountain is some 1000 million years old. It was formed from an uplift which raised an ancient seabed of sandstone conglomerate and folded it into a dramatic anticline (like an inverted V shape). The granite rock which lies beneath Mount Augustus is said to be 1650 million years old.

Francis Gregory, on his journey through the Gascoyne, became the first European to climb the mountain in 1858, and he named the rock after his brother, Sir Augustus Charles Gregory (1819-1905). It is called Burringurrah by local Wadjari people after a Dreamtime figure, a young boy, who was speared and turned into a rock.

More than 100 species of birds can be seen on and around Mount Augustus. There are also many watering holes near Mount Augustus. Like Uluru, the colour of the rock changes during dawn and dusk. Bright pink, orange and red with the occasional green reflect the changes of its mood. Unlike Uluru, there is a great deal of plant growth on and around the mountain, dominated by wattles, cassias and eremophilas.

Bald Rock

Bald Rock. Photo used with permission from Henry Gold.

Bald Rock is situated in Bald Rock National Park on the New South Wales-Queensland border. The park is accessed via the Mt Lindesay Highway.

The ' Rock' is Australia's largest exposed granite surface, and rises to 1277 metres above sea level. It towers about 200 metres up out of the surrounding bushland, is 750 metres long and 500 metres wide.

Australia's wild rivers are seen as relatively unaltered by modern human development, and exist in their natural condition – to flow freely without dams or other barriers. However, free flowing rivers have never been void of human activity. Indigenous and other peoples have long engaged in productive activities in and around wild rivers, with a deep knowledge base, awareness and attachment to the life of the river.

This heritage tradition and contemporary engagement of Indigenous people has been recognised in heritage protection legislation in Australia. Indigenous people have a significant role to play in the ongoing management, use and conservation of wild rivers.

The national importance of wild rivers across Australia was first recognised by the Australian Government in 1992. The Wild Rivers project set out to identify rivers, encourage protection, engage in voluntary management of the whole catchment, and promote the values of wild rivers. The project was guided by water resource management and nature conservation agencies, local government, farmers, conservation groups, Indigenous people and the scientific community.

Like other rivers in Australia, wild rivers are highly varied in their makeup. Wild rivers may exist as a single channel, a channel network, or a network of waterholes and billabongs, as well as having some overland flow. They can exist as perennial (permanently flowing) or non-perennial (seasonally flowing) rivers. Wild rivers can also be characterised by spectacular gorges, waterfalls, deep water holes, and fast and slow flowing channels of water.

At the same time, all the biological processes associated with the river and the land surrounding the river, extending to its intimate catchment, must not have been significantly altered by modern or colonial society. The catchment area for a river is the entire river system from its source, all the tributaries and down to its mouth. Australia has 12 catchment divisions.

There are 208 major waterways in Western Australian and 48 have been identified as wild rivers. Many of the wild rivers (37) are found in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of northern Australia. Some of the large rivers in north western Australia – the Daly, the Victoria, the Fitzroy and the Gascoyne – form catchments which are heritage listed and their mouths contain sites of international significance. Australia's dry inland rivers, such as the Diamantina, which on occasion flows into Lake Eyre in northern South Australia, are some of the last of the world's unregulated dry river systems.

There are also highly valued and protected wild rivers in southern Australia, especially in Tasmania with the Franklin–Lower Gordon Wild Rivers, and in places such as the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park in New South Wales.

Northern Australian and Tasmanian inland water environments are generally in good condition. [In comparison,]… many of Australia's inland water environments in southern Australia, and particularly the Murray–Darling Basin are in a degraded condition...[due to] high levels of water resource development
State of the Environment 2011, Inland water, Current state and trends of the land environment

Like some of the controversial campaigns in the 1980s for the Franklin–Lower Gordon Wild Rivers, since 2009 there has been much debate about the appropriate resource development and management for Queensland's ten wild river areas, mainly on Cape York.