The
Finke River is one of the largest rivers in
central AustraliaCentral Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...
. Its source is in the
Northern TerritoryThe Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
's
MacDonnell RangesThe MacDonnell Ranges of the Northern Territory, are a long series of mountain ranges located in the centre of Australia , and consist of parallel ridges running to the east and west of Alice Springs...
, and the name Finke River is first applied at the confluence of the Davenport and Ormiston Creeks, just north of Glen Helen. From here the river meanders for approximately 600 km to the western edge of the
Simpson DesertThe Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia. It is the fourth largest Australian desert, with an area of 176,500 km² ....
in northern
South AustraliaSouth Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
. Usually the river is a string of waterholes, but it can become a raging torrent during rare flood events. In extreme events, water from the Finke River flows into the Macumba River, and thence into
Lake EyreLake Eyre is the lowest point in Australia, at approximately below sea level, and, on the rare occasions that it fills, it is the largest lake in Australia and 18th largest in the world...
, a total distance from headwater streams of around 750 km. Major tributaries include Ellery Creek, and the Palmer and Hugh Rivers. The Finke River flows through the
West MacDonnellWest MacDonnell is a national park in the Northern Territory , 1234 km south of Darwin. It extends along the MacDonnell Ranges west of Alice Springs....
and
Finke Gorge National ParkFinke Gorge is a national park in the Northern Territory of Australia, 1318 km south of Darwin.The Park covers an area of 458 square kilometres, and includes the impressive desert oasis Palm Valley, home to a diverse range of plant species, many of which are rare and unique to the area...
s.
The Finke River was named by
John McDouall StuartJohn McDouall Stuart was one of the most accomplished and famous of all Australia's inland explorers. Stuart led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from south to north and return, and the first to do so from a starting point in South Australia, achieving this...
in 1860 after an
AdelaideAdelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
man, William Finke, who was one of the promoters of his expedition. The indigenous name for the river in parts of the Northern Territory is
Larapinta, which lends its name to Larapinta Drive, which runs west from Alice Springs, and the
Larapinta walking trailThe Larapinta Trail is an extended walking track in the Northern Territory, Australia. Its total length covers from East to West, with one end at Alice Springs and the other at Mount Sonder, one of the territory's highest mountains...
.
Antiquity of the Finke River
The Finke River has long been cited as "
the oldest river in the world", particularly by tour operators, and in popular books and brochures. In places such as the James Range, the Finke flows through deeply incised meanders (
see Google Maps image). Because meanders only form on flat plains, the river must have formed before the ranges were pushed up; this happened in a
mountain building eventOrogeny refers to forces and events leading to a severe structural deformation of the Earth's crust due to the engagement of tectonic plates. Response to such engagement results in the formation of long tracts of highly deformed rock called orogens or orogenic belts...
referred to as the
Alice Springs OrogenyThe Alice Springs Orogeny was a major tectonic episode in central Australia responsible for the formation of a series of large mountain ranges. The episode started at about 450 million years ago and concluded about 300 million years ago...
which peaked between 400 and 300 million years age (
DevonianThe Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
to
CarboniferousThe Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Devonian Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Permian Period, about 299.0 ± 0.8 Mya . The name is derived from the Latin word for coal, carbo. Carboniferous means "coal-bearing"...
Periods),. Therefore, some parts of the river’s course must have been already in existence around this time. But southern parts of its course must be much younger because the areas where the Finke now flows near the southern edge of the Northern Territory, and further south, were under the sea during the
MesozoicThe Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...
Era, part of the
Great Artesian BasinThe Great Artesian Basin provides the only reliable source of freshwater through much of inland Australia. The basin is the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world, stretching over a total of , with temperatures measured ranging from 30°C to 100°C...
.
The antiquity of the Finke River is not unique, but applies equally to other large mountain-sourced river systems in central Australia, e.g. the
ToddThe Todd River is an ephemeral river in the southern Northern Territory, central Australia. The origins of the Todd River begin in the MacDonnell Ranges, where it flows past the Telegraph Station, almost through the center of Alice Springs, through Heavitree Gap at the southern end of Alice Springs...
and Hale Rivers and many others, because most of the central Australian mountain belts formed at around the same time. There are other eroded mountain ranges of equal or greater age to the MacDonnell Ranges, both in Australia and on other continents, so present rivers in those areas may have evolved from ancestral streams of equal and greater antiquity than the Finke.