Qualla: Alice River (Barcoo River tributary)

Alice River (Barcoo River tributary): Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most rivers run to the sea. The Alice does not. Rising on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, it turns its back on the coast and flows southwest, away from the ocean and into the immense, sun-flattened interior of Queensland. For much of the year there is no river to speak of at all - just a sandy channel and a string of waterholes waiting under a hard sky. Then the summer rains come, and the Alice fills, spreads, and joins the Barcoo on a journey that ends not at any coastline but in the dead centre of the continent.

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alice River (Barcoo River tributary): Iningai Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The traditional owners of this country are the Iningai people, whose lands reach west of the Great Dividing Range and whose name for themselves is also recorded as Yiningay. Their region took in the catchments of the Alice River and Cornish Creek and the country around Longreach,...

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alice River (Barcoo River tributary): The River That Flows Inland

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 3.0. Here is the geography that makes the Alice strange. Its waters feed the Barcoo, and the Barcoo, joined further on by the Thomson, becomes Cooper Creek - one of the great rivers of the Lake Eyre basin, the largest internal drainage system in Australia and one of the largest on Ear...

Image: Kmusser | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alice River (Barcoo River tributary): Named in the Year of First Contact

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1846, the explorer Thomas Mitchell became the first European to lay eyes on the Barcoo and the Alice. He named the Alice, and his own name stuck to far more than one river: the surrounding pastoral district and the tough native grass that fed its sheep both became 'Mitchell,' ...

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alice River (Barcoo River tributary): When the Dry River Wakes

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. A river that is usually a sandy bed becomes something else entirely when it floods. In 1891 the Alice rose in a record flood that cut traffic for a week. On 20 March 1910 it spilled across all the low-lying country and blocked the railway line outright. This is the paradox of the...

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0