What are Australian rivers?

Australia's major rivers include the Murray, the Darling, the Murrumbidgee, the Yarra, the Brisbane, the Swan, the Snowy, the Hawkesbury, the Hunter, the Fitzroy, and the Ord. The Murray is the longest at about 2,508 kilometres, while the Murray-Darling system as a whole drains 14 per cent of the continent and ranks among the longer river systems in the world.

Most Australian rivers flow either to the Pacific (east of the Great Dividing Range), to the Indian Ocean (north and west), or into the Murray-Darling Basin (south-east). A fourth large group flows inward to no outlet, ending in salt lakes. Lake Eyre / Kati Thanda is the centre of one of the largest internal drainage basins in the world, fed by rivers such as the Diamantina and the Cooper Creek that only flow after major rains in central Queensland.

Australian rivers are unusual globally for their high variability. Many carry no water at all for long periods between rain events. Cooper Creek may flood the Channel Country and reach Lake Eyre once every five or ten years; the Todd River through Alice Springs is dry most of the time. This variability has shaped Aboriginal patterns of life around permanent waterholes, and made European-style year-round farming difficult without irrigation.

Most major Australian capital cities are built on or near a major river. Sydney sits on Port Jackson at the mouth of the Parramatta River; Melbourne on the Yarra; Brisbane on the Brisbane River; Perth on the Swan; Adelaide on the Torrens; and Hobart on the Derwent estuary. Federal-state water-sharing agreements, including the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, are among the most long-running and contested intergovernmental processes in Australian politics.