The Calvert River is a river in the
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Au ...
of
Australia.
Course
The headwaters rise on a plain between the Calvert Hills and China Wall and flow northward through mostly uninhabited lands and
pastoral leases such as
Calvert Hills Station before finally discharging into the
Gulf of Carpentaria
The Gulf of Carpentaria (, ) is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea (the body of water that lies between Australia and New Guinea). The northern boundary ...
east of
Borroloola
Borroloola ( local Aboriginal languages: ''Burrulula'') is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located on the McArthur River, about 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Location
Borroloola lies on the traditional c ...
, not far from the border with
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
in the Gulf Coastal
bioregion
A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use th ...
. It has a mean annual outflow of ,
Before reaching the sea it flows through the
Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s
Pungalina-Seven Emu Sanctuary.
Fourteen
tributaries
A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...
feed the river including; Bloodwood Creek, Tobacco Creek, Goanna Creek, Pungalina Creek and the Little Calvert River.
Catchment
The river’s catchment area is , wedged between the watersheds for the
Robinson River to the west,
Settlement Creek to east and the Nicholson River to the south. It contains no major towns and the population was 103 in 2001, 45% of whom are
Aboriginal people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
. The river is not dammed, nor used for irrigation. The main economic activity is
cattle grazing.
[
A total of 34 species of fish are found in the river including; the Glassfish, Barred Grunter, Sonub nosed Garfish, Milkfish, Fly-specked Hardyhead, Treadfin Silver Biddy, Flathead Goby, Spangled Perch, ]Barramundi
The barramundi (''Lates calcarifer'') or Asian sea bass, is a species of catadromous fish in the family Latidae of the order Perciformes. The species is widely distributed in the Indo-West Pacific, spanning the waters of the Middle East, Sou ...
, Oxeye Herring, Rainbowfish, Black-banded Rainbowfish, Northern Trout Gudgeon, Bony Bream, Catfish, Spotted Scat, Hyrtl's Tandan, Freshwater Longtom, Seven-spot Archerfish and the Giant Gudgeon. The endangered Gulf snapping turtle has been found in the upper reaches of the river.
History
The traditional owners
Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...
of the area are the Garawa peoples.
The river was named by Ludwig Leichhardt
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, (23 October 1813 – c. 1848) was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's dis ...
when on expedition from Queensland to Darwin
Darwin may refer to:
Common meanings
* Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection
* Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...
in 1845. He named the river for another member of his party, John Calvert, in acknowledgement of his good service to the expedition.
See also
* List of rivers of Northern Territory
References
{{Rivers of the Northern Territory , state=collapsed
Rivers of the Northern Territory
Gulf of Carpentaria