Warrego River

Warrego River in Cunnamulla

The Warrego River is a river in eastern Australia. It rises in the south-west of the state of Queensland and flows in the northwest of New South Wales in the Darling River. He is reaching the farthest north tributary of the Darling River.

The river flows from its source in the Carnarvon National Park, first west and then bends to the southwest until it empties into the Darling River below Bourke. The main tributaries of the River Warrago are the Nive River and the Langlo River.

The cities Augathella, Charleville, Cunnamulla Wyandra and lie on the banks of the river. Cunnamulla has thus secured the only one of these settlements flood walls and is resistant to flooding.

Warrego is an aboriginal word and in German means " sandy river " - Two warships of the Royal Australian Navy have been named after the river: " HMAS Warrego ".

Inflows

Most of the Einzungsgebietes the Warrego River is too dry for cultivation and has only sporadic rainfall 350-500 mm per year. The natural vegetation consists of grasslands on the more fertile clay soils and reporting bushes on the less fertile red earth. Mostly the land is used as pasture for sheep and cattle; Irrigation for cultivation does not allow the seasonal widely differing water level of the river. The Warrego River leads only irregularly water. It does happen that he falls dried over years, and significant amounts of water reach the Darling River only in very wet years when La Niña prevails.

Outflows

Below Wyandra the river forms a series of river tributaries. In floods of Widgeegoara Creek, the Kudnapper Creek and Noorama Creek divert water into the Nebine Creek, a tributary of the Culgoa River, from. The Cuttaburra Creek connects the Warrego River via a distribution of flood channels and wetlands with the Paroo River. The Bayou Irrara Creek empties into the Kerribee Creek, which flows through a series of wetlands before it joins Lake in Utah.

Floods

If the weather phenomenon La Niña occurs, the Warrego River floods are usually the result. Larger floods in this context, there were in 1950, 1954-1956, 1971, 1973, 1998 and 2008. The flood that caused the most damage, had nothing to do with this weather phenomenon. In April 1990, fell as a result of two extremely strong trough weather conditions around Easter in Cunnamulla within just two weeks, over 400 mm of rain, which means " more than one complete annual amount of rain in more than 60 % of the annual " corresponded. The river reached, as almost all tributaries of the Darling River, almost a record, and the cities Augathella and Charleville were devastated. In Charleville, mass a peak of 8.54 meters.

Fauna

The Warrego River is one of the few rivers where the fish belonging to the Tiger Bidyanus bidyanus (german silver perch ) spawning in the wild. The cod perch Macquaria ambigua ( golden perch ) and Maccullochella peelii ( Murray cod) are also found in the river. The 500 km ² Carnarvon station, once a huge ranch at the source of the river, was bought in 2001 by the Australian Bush Heritage Fund to protect endangered bird there and other animal species.