CONFIGURATION AND CLIMATE. i\ 



The waters from the western side of the Queensland mountains — there called 

 the Dividing Range— flow down the Warrego into the Darling. Here they 

 are joined by the waters from the higher ranges of New South Wales and 

 Victoria, called the Australian Alps. These waters have been brought down by 

 the Murray, the Murrumbidgee, and the Goulbum, and the united floods fall 

 into the sea, through Lake Alexandrina, between Melbourne and Adelaide. 



On paper this river system shows well. The Darling has been navigated 

 up to Walgett, which is 2345 miles from the sea, and this distance entitles 

 the Australian stream to rank third among the rivers of the world, only the 

 Mississippi and the Amazon coming before it. But the facts are not so good as 

 they seem. The Darling depends upon flood waters. Sometimes these flood 

 waters will come down in sufficient volume to enable the stream to run 

 from end to end, and sometimes they fail half-way. The river is never 

 open to navigation all the year round, and frequently it is not open to 

 navigation from year's end to year's end. The occasional failure of the 

 Darling for so long a period upsets all calculations. The colonists will take 

 this stream and the river Murray in hand some day, and will lock both 

 and preserve their storm waters, and the south-eastern corner of the 

 continent will then have a grand river communication. Stores will then 

 be sent up, and wool will be brought down with certainty, where now all 

 is doubt and speculation. Commissions to consider the subject have been 

 appointed both by the Victorian Government and the Government of New 

 South Wales, and conferences are this year (1886) being held upon it and 

 cognate subjects. Unhappily, there are no other streams in Australia that 

 can be so dealt with, though it should be added that the last has not yet 

 been heard of the rivers of Northern Australia. We are ignorant of their 

 capacities, though a good guess can be made about them. 



Taking Australia from east to west, we find a high range skirting the 

 coast on the east, and supporting a dense sub-tropical vegetation, and giving 

 rise to an extensive but uncertain river system. Next comes a more sterile 

 interior, composed of desert, of shallow salt lakes, and of higher steppes in 

 unknown proportions. Approaching the west coast we meet ranges again, 

 and rivers and fertile country. 



Mr. H. C. Russell, Government Astronomer for New South Wales, in 

 his valuable pamphlet on the ' Physical Geography and Climate of New 

 South Wales,' points out that ' if water flowed over the whole of the 

 Australian continent, the trade wind would then blow steadily over the 

 northern portions from the south-east, and above it the like steady return 

 current would blow to the south-east, while the " brave west winds " and 

 southerly would hold sway over the other half — conditions which now exist 

 a short distance from the coast. Into this system Australia introduces an 

 enormous disturbing element, of which the great interior plains form the 

 most active agency in changing the directions of the wind currents. The 



