Gwydir River

Gwydir River at Bingara

Template: Infobox River / Obsolete

The Gwydir River is a river in the Australian state of New South Wales and is part of the Murray - Darling Basin. He has two major tributaries - the Horton River and the Rocky River.

In Copeton Dam on the Gwydir River south of Inverell water for the surrounding towns, livestock and irrigation is maintained. Below the dam the river offers some of the most challenging rapids in Australia. Before the construction of the dam and other regulatory measures, the Gwydir River spilled into the Gingham and Lower Gwydir Wetlands, a marshland. The Gwydir Highway is named after the river.

Approximately 800 ha of Gwydir wetland was declared on 14 June 1999 at a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. The Australian federal government bought the land, which was the largest wetland in private hands in New South Wales, on for AU $ 10 million. This is a new National Park arise because of this wetland habitat for 160 bird species, of which four endangered offers.

Geography

The Gwydir River rises in the southern part of the northern tableland of New South Wales near the town of Uralla and flows 668 km initially to the northwest and then west. Shortly before Moree splits the river. The main arm is subsequently called Mehi River and flows parallel to the Gwydir River to the west in order to open this as in the Barwon River, a source flow of the Darling River.

In the upper and middle reaches of the river flows through the cities of Bundarra, Bingara, Gravesend and Pallamallawa.

West of Moree Gwydir River splits the further on: the Lower Gwydir or Big Leather Watercourse is the southern branch of the river, the Gingham Watercourse, the northern. The Gingham Watercourse flows west into the balloons Creek before it empties into the Big Leather Watercourse. The Big Leather Watercourse then opens into the Mehi River in the south. In Collarenebri also the Mehi River flows into the Barwon River.

History

The botanist Allan Cunningham in 1827 crossed the river at Gravesend, and called it after his patron, Peter Robert Burrell, 2nd Baron Gwydir, who founded the title on the Gwydir Castle in Wales. The Federal Constituency Division of Gwydir, which was created in 1901 and abolished until the 2007 elections again, was named after the river.

The iron lattice bridges that span the river in Bundarra and Bingara, are seen as important bridges in the colonial period.

Agriculture

In Moree, there are large, irrigated cotton fields, besides grain, livestock and other agricultural goods. The cotton industry depends on the irrigation and has been particularly affected by the drought in recent years, in which the water allocations for the agricultural holdings were drastically reduced. 2006 calculated is that the cotton industry consumed 87 % of the employed in agriculture water from the Gwydir River.

Irrigation at the headwaters of the Gwydir River led to a far-reaching reduction of water levels downstream. The reduction in water flow affected the landowners who had used the river water for the impregnation of livestock and for irrigation of small grain fields. The periodic flooding not water all year round leading watercourses and wetlands in more remote from the river lands fell out. These conflicts led to the 1997 founding of the Gwydir Regulated River Management Committee and to a water management plan, which came into force on 1 July 2004.

Fauna

The Namoi Turtle - also called Bell's turtle - one finds endemic to the headwaters of the Namoi River, the Gwydir River and Macdonald River to the north-west slopes of the Northern Tableland.