Mitchell River (Queensland)
| Mitchell | |
| River | |
 View inland, up the Mitchell River, at small waterfalls in between Dunbar and Koolatah Stations.
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| Name origin: In honour of Sir Thomas Mitchell | |
| Country | Australia |
|---|---|
| State | Queensland |
| Region | Far North Queensland |
| Tributaries | |
| - left | Hodgkinson River, Dry River (Queensland), Walsh River, Lynd River |
| - right | McLeod River (Queensland), St George River (Queensland), Little Mitchell River, Palmer River (Queensland), Alice River |
| Source | Atherton Tableland, Great Dividing Range |
| - location | west of Kuranda |
| - elevation | 376 m (1,234 ft) |
| - coordinates | 16°46′42″S 145°18′11″E / 16.77833°S 145.30306°E |
| Mouth | Gulf of Carpentaria |
| - location | north of Kowanyama |
| - elevation | 0 m (0 ft) |
| - coordinates | 15°11′47″S 141°35′04″E / 15.19639°S 141.58444°ECoordinates: 15°11′47″S 141°35′04″E / 15.19639°S 141.58444°E |
| Length | 750 km (466 mi) |
| Basin | 41,435 km2 (15,998 sq mi) |
| National parks | Hann Tableland National Park; Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park; Chillagoe-Mungana Caves National Park; Bulleringa National Park; Forty Mile Scrub National Park |
| Reservoir | Lake Mitchell |
 Location of Mitchell River mouth in Queensland
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The Mitchell River is a river located in Far North Queensland, Australia. The river rises on the Atherton Tableland about 50 kilometres (31 mi) northwest of Cairns, and flows about 750 kilometres (470 mi) northwest across Cape York Peninsula from Mareeba to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The river's watershed covers an area of 71,757 km2 (27,706 sq mi). The Mitchell River has the state's largest discharge, at 11.3 million megalitres (2.5×1012 imp gal; 3.0×1012 US gal) annually, but is intermittent and may be dry for part of the year. Lake Mitchell is the main water storage facility on the river.
It was named by Ludwig Leichhardt on the 16 June 1845 after Sir Thomas Mitchell while he was on his overland expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. It may have been previously named the Vereenighde River in 1623 by a Dutch merchant and navigator, Jan Carstensz.
The Mitchell River and its tributaries have for a long time carved their way westwards through the rugged, weathered highlands of the Great Dividing Range, carrying away sediments to be deposited in the broad floodplains and wetlands of the Gulf Savannah country.
The rivers' waters 'pulse' annually with monsoonal rains, seasonally collecting water from across the local tropical rainforests in the highlands to the east; the wet sclerophyll forests in the central uplands; a variety of woodlands plus savannah in the western plains; annually flooding with freshwater, the tidal plains, wetlands, estuaries, and mangroves of the lower Mitchell and coastal plains.
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