The Burdekin River

Date: 21 Oct 2019 [unknown]
Location: Queensland, Australia

The Burdekin River which is located in North Queensland, was first named the Wickham River by John Wickham in 1839. It was later named the Burdekin River by Ludwig Leichhardt in 1849 in honour of Thomas Burdekin. Thomas's widow, Mary, was one of the sponsors who funded the expedition, which discovered the river, again.

The Burdekin River flows along an 886 kilometre course and has a catchment of over 120,000 square kilometres. It is the largest river in Australia by peak discharge volume of water.

The Burdekin River Bridge, which is not constructed on a firm bedrock base, and is the only one of it's kind built on eleven huge floating concrete caissons. The bridge is one of the longest multi span bridges in Australia and is 1100 meters long. It cost 6 million dollars to construct over a ten year period from 1947 to 1957. In 2010, the bridge was recognised as a National Engineering Heritage Landmark and finally given it's own name plaque at about the same time.

The Burdekin Falls Dam is the largest constructed in Queensland, completed in 1987, and forms a lake four times larger than Sydney Harbour, which has been named Lake Dalrymple. It was named an engineering Icon in 2009.

• Burdekin River, wikipedia
• Burdekin Bridge, wikipedia
• Burdekin Rail Bridge, wikipedia
• Burdekin Dam, wikipedia