Mondo Knows Facts
The Murray-Darling is Australia's largest river system
It drains about one seventh of the continent and waters most of its irrigated farmland The Murray and its longest tributary, the Darling, together run some 3,300 kilometres. The basin covers roughly a million square kilometres across four states and supports cotton, rice and grape growing. Its mouth in South Australia is sometimes sealed by a sandbar when flows are low. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Australia's Lake Eyre basin never reaches the seaRivers in the basin end in a salt lake that is dry for long stretches of yearsPersian qanats carried water underground for milesTunnel builders tapped hillside aquifers and led them downhill by gentle gradientsThe Torres Strait is shallow and full of reefsIt separates Cape York from New Guinea and is only about 150 kilometres across at its widestAustralia is wider than the MoonThe continent spans about 4,000 kilometres, while the Moon's diameter is roughly 3,475The Great Barrier Reef is visible from outer spaceStretching for over 2,300 kilometres off Australia northeastern coast, it is the world's largest living structure.The Nullarbor Plain is the largest single exposure of limestone bedrockSpanning 200,000 square kilometres in southern Australia, the Nullarbor Plain is almost completely treeless.
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Tags: rivers, australia, irrigation
The Murray-Darling is Australia's largest river system: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- It drains about one seventh of the continent and waters most of its irrigated farmland. The figure is taken from Geoscience Australia, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.