The Lynd River is a river located on the

Cape York Peninsula Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth’s last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupación ...

Far North Queensland Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. Its largest city is Cairns and it is dominated geographically by Cape York Peninsula, which stretches north to the Torres Strait, and west to the Gulf C ...

, Australia.

Course and features

The headwaters of the river rise in the

Forty Mile Scrub National Park Forty Mile Scrub is a national park in Queensland (Australia), 224 km drive southwest of Cairns. Ancient volcanic streams, grass forests, springs, streams, and a preserved isolated pocket of semi-evergreen vines are just some of the conten ...

in the

Great Dividing Range The Great Dividing Range, also known as the East Australian Cordillera or the Eastern Highlands, is a cordillera system in eastern Australia consisting of an expansive collection of mountain ranges, plateaus and rolling hills, that runs rough ...

and flows in a north westerly direction. It flows down the range and onto the plains of the

Gulf Country The Gulf Country is the region of woodland and savanna grassland surrounding the Gulf of Carpentaria in north western Queensland and eastern Northern Territory on the north coast of Australia. The region is also called the Gulf Savannah. It ...

past

cattle station In Australia and New Zealand, a cattle station is a large farm ( station is equivalent to the American ranch), the main activity of which is the rearing of cattle. The owner of a cattle station is called a '' grazier''. The largest cattle stati ...

s such Torwood, The Lake outstation and Bulimba. Continuing north it discharges into the Mitchell River near Staaten River National Park. From source to

mouth In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on ...

, the Lynd River is joined by twenty

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 ...

including the

Tate River The Tate River is a river in Far North Queensland, Australia. The headwaters of the river rise under Three Mile Mountain in the Great Dividing Range. Formed by the confluence of the Packsaddle Creek and California Creek, the river flows eas ...

, descending over its course. In its upper reaches, the river is crossed by the

Kennedy Highway The Kennedy Highway is a highway in northern Queensland, Australia. It runs as National Route 1 for approximately 243 km from Smithfield, on the northern outskirts of Cairns, to the Gulf Developmental Road in the vicinity of Forty Mile S ...

. The Mitchell River Fan Aggregation, a freshwater wetland area located approximately south east of

Kowanyama Kowanyama is a town and coastal locality in the Aboriginal Shire of Kowanyama, Queensland, Australia. It is the site of the former Mitchell River Mission, founded in 1916, after the nearby Trubanamen Mission (established not far away on Tops ...

, is fed by the

Mitchell Mitchell may refer to: People *Mitchell (surname) *Mitchell (given name) Places Australia * Mitchell, Australian Capital Territory, a light-industrial estate * Mitchell, New South Wales, a suburb of Bathurst * Mitchell, Northern Territo ...

Palmer Palmer may refer to: People and fictional characters * Palmer (pilgrim), a medieval European pilgrim to the Holy Land * Palmer (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Palmer (surname), including a list of people and ...

and Lynd Rivers.

Riparian A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks ar ...

vegetation found along the river include '' Melaleuca fluviatilis'', '' Casuarina cunninghamiana'', ''

Pandanus spiralis ''Pandanus spiralis'' is native to northern Australia. It is commonly called common screwpine, iidool, pandanus palm, screw pine, screw palm or spring pandanus. It is neither a true palm, nor a pine. Distribution ''Pandanus spiralis'' occur ...

'' and ''

Ficus racemosa ''Ficus racemosa'', the cluster fig, red river fig or gular, is a species of plant in the family Moraceae. It is native to Australia and tropical Asia. It is a fast-growing plant with large, very rough leaves, usually attaining the size of a lar ...

'' which provide most of the cover. 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 upper catchment area are the Kunjen peoples.

Etymology

The river was named in 1844 in honour of Lieutenant Robert Lynd of the 63rd Regiment of the British Army 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 ...

during Leichhardt's expedition from Queensland to

Port Essington Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remote ...

. Lynd was a benefactor of Leichhardt's, and assisted him both socially and financially.

William Hann William Hann (26 February 1837 – 5 April 1889) was a pastoralist and explorer in northern Queensland, Australia. His expedition in 1872 found the first indications of the Palmer River goldfield. Early life He was born in Wiltshire, England, ...

also passed through the area as part of his 1872 expedition camping along the river before moving on to the Palmer River.

References

{{Rivers of Queensland, state=collapsed Rivers of Far North Queensland

Course and features

Etymology

See also

References