The Carson River is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

in the Kimberley region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. The headwaters of the river rise at the base of the Foster Range near the southwestern edge of the

Drysdale River National Park Drysdale River National Park is a national park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, northeast of Perth. The park lies about south of Kalumburu and west of Wyndham. The park is the largest and least accessible in the Kimberley, w ...

. The river flows in a northerly direction along the Carson Escarpment and discharges into the King Edward River near Aragoon, about south of Kalumburu. The river has four

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 Morgan River, Swida Creek and Pronga-Marie Creek. The river was named in 1886 by the explorer Charles Burrowes while

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

the area for the Victoria Squatting Company. He named it after the chairman of the company, David Carson. The river contains several permanent pools where examples of

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

art, known as the Gwion Gwion rock paintings, can be found along the cliff faces. 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 areas around the river are the

Wilawila The Wilawila are an indigenous Australian tribe of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Name Norman Tindale gave "wilawila" as the proper tribal ethnonym, but noted that, according to reports by the missionary Theodore Hernández, the sa ...

, Miwa and Wunambal peoples.

References

Rivers of the Kimberley region of Western Australia {{WesternAustralia-river-stub