Jim’s Australiana Spot – 2UE - january 9, 2011

  Riddle of the Rivers 

With Queensland flooded and the Murray pushing fresh water miles out to into the Southern Ocean, let's look at where all the water goes. Jim was at the Murray Mouth at the Coorong a few days ago and has a special report!.

Early explorers were puzzled. Where did the rivers go? The Macquarie, Liverpool, Murrumbidgee, Namoi, Macintyre etc ... the puzzle begins with Matthew Flinders HMS Investigator and it ends with Charles Sturt.

Flinders navigated the coast 1802/03 and saw ‘no large rivers entering the sea’ because the Murray flows into Lake Alexandrina which flow into the Coorong which is open to the sea. Theories abounded about the rivers running west …. Inland sea, dried up in desert …went underground etc

Questions

Charles Sturt finally solved the riddle in 2 arduous explorations which cost him his sight an his health and in one of which he an his men travelled 2,900 km by whaleboat and never went into the sea! He returned again to explore the central desert areas of Australia and was Colonial Secretary of South Australia. He held other colonial posts including Commander of Norfolk Island and Surveyor General. He was born in India and sent to boarding school in England at age 5. He fought in Wellington's army in The Peninsular War against Napoleon and in Canada against the Americans.

These days we remember Sturt mostly for his pea in the desert! Or the University, suburb, electorate, Highway and Football Team

Charles Sturt	Rod Taylor
Can you see the family resemblance?

Flinders
John Bernard O’Hara

Matthew Flinders
He left his island home For leagues of sleepless foam, For stress of alien seas, Where wild winds ever blow; For England’s sake he sought Fresh fields of fame, and fought A stormy world for these, Two hundred years ago. And where the Austral shore Heard southward far the roar Of rising tides that came From lands of ice and snow, Beneath a gracious sky, To fadeless memory He left a deathless name, Two hundred years ago.

Tune in to hear Jim on 2UE every Sunday at 12.30 pm