What is the Murray River? (448)

The Murray River is Australia's longest river, running about 2,508 kilometres from its source in the Australian Alps near Mount Pilot in New South Wales to its mouth at Goolwa in South Australia, where it enters the Southern Ocean through the Coorong wetlands. It forms the border between New South Wales and Victoria along most of its length.

The Murray and its tributaries drain the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range and the rolling country of southern Queensland. Its main tributaries are the Darling River, joining at Wentworth in far western New South Wales, and the Murrumbidgee, joining at Boundary Bend in Victoria. Together these rivers form the Murray-Darling Basin, the largest river system in Australia and the country's most productive agricultural region.

The river was sighted by Europeans in 1824 by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell and named the Murray in 1830 by Charles Sturt for British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies Sir George Murray. From the 1850s through to the early 20th century, paddle-steamers carried wool, wheat, and supplies along the Murray between river ports such as Echuca, Mildura, and Goolwa, and the river was the colonial highway of inland Australia until railways replaced it.

Modern management of the Murray is governed by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (2012), which sets caps on water extraction by irrigators across four states and the ACT. Drought, climate change, and over-allocation of water have made river health a recurring political controversy, with mass fish-kills at Menindee Lakes in 2019 and 2023 prompting reviews of how environmental flows are delivered. The river also has deep cultural significance to many Aboriginal nations along its course, especially the Yorta Yorta, Wamba Wamba, Barapa Barapa, and Ngarrindjeri.