ISS-40 King Sound on the northwest coast of Australia

King Sound is a large gulf in northern

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 t ...

. It expands from the mouth of the Fitzroy River, one of Australia's largest watercourses, and opens to the Indian Ocean. It is about long, and averages about in width. The port town of

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...

lies near the mouth of the Fitzroy River on the eastern shore of King Sound. King Sound has the highest tides in Australia, and amongst the highest in the world, reaching a maximum tidal range of at Derby.Derby tides at derbytourism.com.au
. Retrieved 7 January 2007 The tidal range and water dynamic were researched in 1997–1998. Waters within the sound are generally turbid. The turbidity is associated with the erosion of

tidal flat Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats or, in Ireland, slob or slobs, are coastal wetlands that form in intertidal areas where sediments have been deposited by tides or rivers. A global analysis published in 2019 suggested that tidal fl ...

Geography

Open waters of the sound cover 2,325 km². Other rivers that discharge into the sound include the Lennard River,

Meda River The Meda River is a river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The river is formed when the Lennard River splits into two channels just north of Mount Marmion, the other channel being the May River. Continuing to flow westward the riv ...

, Robinson River and

May River The May River is a river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The river is formed when the Lennard River splits into two channels north of Mount Marmion and near the Kimberley Downs Station homestead, the other channel being the Me ...

. King Sound has a catchment area of 21,315 km². King Sound is part of the

Canning Basin The Canning Basin is a geological basin located in Western Australia. Deposition of sediments began after early-Ordovician thermal subsidnce, and continued into the Early Cretaceous. The Basin covers approximately 506,000 km2 of which appr ...

. The climate is semi-arid and tropical with a strong

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscil ...

al influence. King Sound is bordered by the island clusters of the Buccaneer Archipelago to the East and

Cape Leveque Cape Leveque is at the northernmost tip of the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Cape Leveque is (via the Cape Leveque Road) north of Broome, and is remote with few facilities. Nevertheless, the Cape's sandy beach ...

to the West. The mean depth of King Sound of 18 metres. The mouth of King Sound features a channel that is 50 metres deep and 20 kilometres wide.

History

The traditional owners and original inhabitants of the area are

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 ...

s, namely the

Nimanburu The Nimanburu were an Aboriginal Australian people of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Language The Nimanburu language was one of the Nyulnyulan languages. Their speech was described by other aboriginal informants as a 'heavy' diale ...

, Njulnjul, and Warwa peoples. The first European to explore the sound was

William Dampier William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715) was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnav ...

who visited the region aboard in 1688. Noted

surveyor 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 ...

Phillip Parker King Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna ...

surveyed the coastline in 1821 and named the area Cygnet Bay. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00028.html#chapter02 The area was later visited by John Stokes and John Wickham aboard in 1838. The sound was later named after King. In the 1880s it was one of the sites in the Kimberleys of a short-lived

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...

. Doctor’s Creek, in the south of King Sound, has been the site of various proposals for tidal range energy plants since the 1960s. In 2013, the Derby Tidal Power Project from Tidal Energy Australia was given environmental approval. The 40MW tidal power station is expected to cost $375 million to construct.

References

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External links

Geoscience Australia place names
Sounds of Western Australia Kimberley coastline of Western Australia IMCRA meso-scale bioregions

Geography

History

See also

References

External links