The Darling

The Darling River is the longest river in Australia, flowing 2,739 kilometres from northern New South Wales to its confluence with the Murray River at Wentworth, New South Wales.

Officially the Darling begins near Bourke at the confluence of the Culgoa and Barwon rivers, streams that rise in the ranges of southern Queensland. The whole Murray-Darling river system, one of the largest in the world, drains all of New South Wales west of the Great Dividing Range, much of northern Victoria and southern Queensland and parts of South Australia.

The Queensland headwaters of the Darling (the area now known as the Darling Downs) were gradually colonised from 1815 onward. In 1828 the explorer Charles Sturt was sent by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Ralph Darling, to investigate the course of the Macquarie River. He discovered the Bogan and then, early in 1829, the upper Darling, which he named after the Governor. In 1835 Major Thomas Mitchell travelled the whole length of the Darling, confirming Sturt's earlier discovery that it was a tributary of the Murray.

Although its flow is extraordinarily irregular, drying up frequently, the Darling became a major transportation route in the later 19th century. Pastoralists of western New South Wales used it to send their wool by paddle steamer from busy river ports such as Bourke and Wilcannia to the South Australian railheads at Morgan and Murray Bridge.