The Calvert River is a river in the
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...
of
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
.
Course
The headwaters rise on a plain between the Calvert Hills and China Wall and flow northward through mostly uninhabited lands and
pastoral leases such as
Calvert Hills Station before finally discharging into the
Gulf of Carpentaria
The Gulf of Carpentaria (, ) is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea (the body of water that lies between Australia and New Guinea). The northern boundary is ...
east of
Borroloola, not far from the border with
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
in the Gulf Coastal
bioregion
A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the ...
. It has a mean annual outflow of ,
Before reaching the sea it flows through the
Australian Wildlife Conservancy
The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) is an Australian independent, nonprofit organisation, working to conserve threatened wildlife and ecosystems in Australia. This is principally achieved through the acquisition of extensive areas of land ...
’s
Pungalina-Seven Emu Sanctuary
Pungalina-Seven Emu Sanctuary is a 3060 km2 private protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is managed by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) which purchased Pungalina Station in 2009, with some assistance from t ...
.
Fourteen
tributaries
A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage b ...
feed the river including; Bloodwood Creek, Tobacco Creek, Goanna Creek, Pungalina Creek and the Little Calvert River.
Catchment
The river’s catchment area is , wedged between the watersheds for the
Robinson River to the west,
Settlement Creek to east and the Nicholson River to the south. It contains no major towns and the population was 103 in 2001, 45% of whom are
Aboriginal people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
. The river is not dammed, nor used for irrigation. The main economic activity is
cattle grazing
Pastoral farming (also known in some regions as ranching, livestock farming or grazing) is aimed at producing livestock, rather than growing crops. Examples include dairy farming, raising beef cattle, and raising sheep for wool. In contrast, ar ...
.
[
A total of 34 species of fish are found in the river including; the Glassfish, Barred Grunter, Sonub nosed Garfish, Milkfish, Fly-specked Hardyhead, Treadfin Silver Biddy, Flathead Goby, Spangled Perch, ]Barramundi
The barramundi (''Lates calcarifer'') or Asian sea bass, is a species of catadromous fish in the family Latidae of the order Perciformes. The species is widely distributed in the Indo-West Pacific, spanning the waters of the Middle East, South ...
, Oxeye Herring, Rainbowfish, Black-banded Rainbowfish, Northern Trout Gudgeon, Bony Bream, Catfish, Spotted Scat, Hyrtl's Tandan, Freshwater Longtom, Seven-spot Archerfish
''Toxotes chatareus'', sometimes known by the common names common archerfish, seven-spot archerfish or largescale archerfish, is a species of perciform fish in the archerfish genus ''Toxotes''.Martin F. Gomon & Dianne J. Bray (2011Sevenspot Arc ...
and the Giant Gudgeon. The endangered Gulf snapping turtle
The Gulf snapping turtle or Lavaracks' turtle (''Elseya lavarackorum'') is a large species of freshwater turtle in the sidenecked family Chelidae.Georges A, Thomson S (2010)"Diversity of Australasian freshwater turtles, with an annotated synon ...
has been found in the upper reaches of the river.
History
The traditional owners
Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...
of the area are the Garawa peoples.
The river was named by Ludwig Leichhardt
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, (23 October 1813 – c. 1848) was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's dis ...
when on expedition from Queensland to Darwin in 1845. He named the river for another member of his party, John Calvert, in acknowledgement of his good service to the expedition.
See also
* List of rivers of Northern Territory
References
{{Rivers of the Northern Territory , state=collapsed
Rivers of the Northern Territory
Gulf of Carpentaria