Qualla: Leichhardt River

Leichhardt River: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Plass, L., Public domain. The man whose name this river carries got it wrong. In 1845, pushing across the parched Gulf Country toward Port Essington, Ludwig Leichhardt crossed a wide watercourse and decided it was the Albert. He was mistaken. More than a decade later, Augustus Charles Gregory came through the same country on the 1855–56 North Australian Expedition and crossed this same river. Knowing that Leichhardt had once mistaken it for the Albert, Gregory named it in the lost explorer's honour. Leichhardt had already vanished — swallowed by the interior in 1848 — and would never know a river bore his name. So the Leichhardt commemorates a man twice over: once for his error, and once for his absence.

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Image: Plass, L. | Public domain

Leichhardt River: From Rifle Range to the Gulf

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The river begins humbly, in the Selwyn Range beneath Rifle Creek Hill, about 25 kilometres south of the mining town of Mount Isa. From there it runs north, crossing the Barkly Highway and threading the Gulf Country in a long, looping arc. It widens through Lake Moondarra and Lake...

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Image: Public domain

Leichhardt River: A River That Disappears

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. This is an ephemeral river, and that single word explains its character. In the wet season it can run hard and broad, fed by monsoon rains and cyclones spinning off the Gulf. In the dry, the upper reaches retreat into a string of disconnected waterholes, glassy pools strung along...

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Image: Public domain

Leichhardt River: Bones and Burdens

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The riverbed holds older stories than any explorer's. Paleontologists working its course have turned up fossil remains, including, in 2011, the skull of an unidentified ancient marsupial that one researcher likened to something left over from Planet of the Apes. The modern river ...

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Image: Kgbo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Leichhardt River: The Explorer Who Walked Into Nothing

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Plass, L., Public domain. Leichhardt's name marks rivers and ranges across northern Australia, yet the man himself remains a mystery. The Prussian naturalist made his reputation on that 1844 to 1845 trek from the Darling Downs to Port Essington, surviving where others perished. But in 1848 he set out to c...

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Image: Plass, L. | Public domain