Qualla: Murchison River

Murchison River: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hughesdarren, CC BY-SA 3.0. On most days the Murchison is not a river at all. For much of the year its bed is a ribbon of dry sand winding through the Mid West, broken only by the odd permanent pool where the water hides from the heat. The name comes from a strange origin: the explorer George Grey, shipwrecked at the river's mouth on 1 April 1839 during a disastrous expedition, named it for his patron, the Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Murchison. Grey limped away on foot. The river he named, all 820 kilometres of it, would prove just as unforgiving - and just as full of sudden, drowning life.

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Image: Hughesdarren | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murchison River: A River Made of Salt Lakes

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phillip Capper from Wellington, New Zealand, CC BY 2.0. The Murchison rises on the southern slopes of the Robinson Ranges, about 75 kilometres north of Meekatharra, and its catchment sprawls across some 82,000 square kilometres of the Yilgarn craton - an ancient, almost flat slab of the oldest crust on Earth. In the dry eastern reache...

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Image: Phillip Capper from Wellington, New Zealand | CC BY 2.0

Murchison River: Holding On in Dry Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hughesdarren, CC BY-SA 4.0. People have lived hard along the Murchison. Murchison House Station, established by Charles Von Bibra near the river's western end in 1858, ranks among the oldest pastoral stations in the state - a foothold in country that punishes overconfidence. Up and down the catchment, the p...

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Image: Hughesdarren | CC BY-SA 4.0

Murchison River: When the River Runs

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hughesdarren, CC BY-SA 4.0. And then it rains. The Murchison's floods are the stuff of legend, and the records read like a catalogue of disaster and astonishment. In 1900, after a fortnight of downpours, the river ran eight miles wide near Cue, submerging roads under ten feet of water; further downstream it...

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Image: Hughesdarren | CC BY-SA 4.0

Murchison River: Drowning and Greening

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cookaa, CC BY-SA 3.0. Here is the paradox of the Murchison: the same floods that drowned mines and homesteads were also the land's salvation. After the catastrophic flood of 1900, with damage everywhere, the pastoralists were not despairing but jubilant - because they could already see how fast the gr...

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Image: Cookaa | CC BY-SA 3.0