The Robinson River is a river in

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 ...

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 ...

Description

The headwaters of the river rise on the

Barkly Tableland The Barkly Tableland is a rolling plain of grassland in Australia. It runs from the eastern part of the Northern Territory into western Queensland. It is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory and covers , 21% of the Northern Terr ...

and flow in a northerly direction across mostly uninhabited plains, crossing

Highway 1 The following highways are numbered 1. For roads numbered A1, see list of A1 roads. For roads numbered B1, see list of B1 roads. For roads numbered M1, see List of M1 roads. For roads numbered N1, see list of N1 roads. For roads numbered ...

then past the

Seven Emu 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 the ...

homestead before eventually 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 ...

approximately east of

Borroloola Borroloola ( local Aboriginal languages: ''Burrulula'') is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located on the McArthur River, about 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Location Borroloola lies on the traditional c ...

. The

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

at the river mouth occupies an area of and is in near pristine condition. It is river dominated in nature with a wave dominated delta and has an area of covered with

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evoluti ...

s. The drainage basin occupies an area of and is wedged between the catchment areas for

McArthur River The McArthur River is a river in the Northern Territory of Australia which flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria at Port McArthur, opposite the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands. The river was named by Ludwig Leichhardt while he explored the are ...

to the west and

Calvert River The Calvert River is a river in the Northern Territory of Australia. 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 ...

to the east and the Barkly to the south. The river has a mean annual outflow of ,

Flora and fauna

Stands of ''

Cycas angulata ''Cycas angulata'' is a species of cycad in the genus ''Cycas'', native to Australia in northeast Northern Territory (lower reaches of the Foelsche, Robinson and Wearyan Rivers near Borroloola) and northwest Queensland ( Bountiful Islands). I ...

'' are found along the lower reaches of the river. A total of 33 species of fish are found in the river including:

sailfin glassfish SailFin was an open-source Java application server project led by Sun Microsystems. It implements the JCP SIP Servlet 1.1 (JSR 289) specification integrated with the open-source Java EE application server GlassFish. SailFin effectively exten ...

, barred grunter, snub-nosed garfish, fly-specked hardyhead,

mouth almighty ''Glossamia aprion'' is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish from the family Apogonidae, the cardinalfishes, from northern Australia and New Guinea. In Australia, it is commonly known as the mouth almighty. Description ''G. aprion'' has a cr ...

golden flathead goby Golden means made of, or relating to gold. Golden may also refer to: Places United Kingdom *Golden, in the parish of Probus, Cornwall *Golden Cap, Dorset *Golden Square, Soho, London *Golden Valley, a valley on the River Frome in Gloucestershir ...

spangled perch ''Leiopotherapon unicolor'', the spangled grunter or spangled perch is a species of ray-finned fish, a grunter from the family Terapontidae. It is endemic to Australia. Description ''Leiopotherapon unicolor'' has a slender, oval shaped body whi ...

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 ...

mangrove jack The mangrove red snapper (''Lutjanus argentimaculatus''), also known as mangrove jack, grey snapper, creek red bream, Stuart evader, dog bream, purple sea perch, red bream, red perch, red reef bream, river roman, or rock barramundi, is a species ...

chequered rainbowfish Check (also checker, Brit: chequer) is a pattern of modified stripes consisting of crossed horizontal and vertical lines which form squares. The pattern typically contains two colours where a single checker (that is a single square within the chec ...

giant gudgeon In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: '' gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...

spotted scat ''Scatophagus argus'', the spotted scat, butterfish, mia mia, spotted butterfish or tiger scat, is a species of fish in the scat family Scatophagidae. It occurs in two basic color morphs which are called green scat and ruby or red scat. This fis ...

freshwater longtom Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include ...

, and

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 ...

. The critically endangered

largetooth sawfish The largetooth sawfish (''Pristis pristis'', syn. ''P. microdon'' and ''P. perotteti'') is a species of sawfish, family Pristidae. It is found worldwide in tropical and subtropical coastal regions, but also enters freshwater. It has declined dra ...

has been caught in the river mouth. 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 Robinson.

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'' and the '' Gunindiri'' 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 ...

during his expedition from

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_ ...

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 ...

in 1845. Leichhardt named the river after one of the supporters of the expedition,

Joseph Phelps Robinson Joseph Phelps Robinson (c.1815 – 13 August 1848) was a banker and politician in colonial New South Wales, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Colonial Australia Robinson was a Quaker and arrived aboard the ''Cornubia'' in ...

, a well known philanthropist, banker and Quaker. In 1992 the Robinson River

pastoral lease A pastoral lease, sometimes called a pastoral run, is an arrangement used in both Australia and New Zealand where government-owned Crown land is leased out to graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands. Australia Pastoral lease ...

and surrounding areas were handed back to the Garawa people who had started working on the land claim in 1980.

References

{{Rivers of the Northern Territory , state=collapsed Rivers of the Northern Territory Gulf of Carpentaria

Description

Flora and fauna

History

See also

References