Geography of the Yarra River

Map of Yarra River and its tributaries.

The Yarra River is a river in East-Central Victoria, Australia that flows through the city of Melbourne. This article contains explanations and lists of the river's tributaries and other geographic features. The river flows atop layers of silt that built up within an ancient river valley around 10,000-15,000 years ago.

The river's major tributaries are the Plenty River, Merri Creek, Darebin Creek, Diamond Creek, Gardiners Creek, Mullum Mullum Creek and the Moonee Ponds Creek. It hosts a wide range of geographic features including; bends, rapids, lakes, islands, floodplains, billabongs, wetlands, etc. Most features have been named after translated Woiwurrung phrases or have European, particularly British, origins.

Tributaries

The Little Yarra River at Yarra Junction, 2009

The Yarra River has about 50 named tributaries; 6 rivers, 42 creeks and 2 gullies. At its most easterly point, it is fed by many small unnamed creeks and streams that begin in the Yarra Ranges within the Yarra Ranges National Park, which are sometimes fed by snowfalls. Below is a list of its tributaries (from downstream to upstream):^[1]

Geographical features

Bolin Bolin Billabong, cut off in 1100 AD, shown here in 2008 at 10-15% its volume.

The Yarra River hosts a wide range of geographical features, perhaps the most plentiful of which are billabongs, of which there are over 100, particularly in the floodplains near Yering, Yarra Glen and Coldstream. Being a considerably thin river for almost its entire length, there are very few islands or lakes. In the middle reaches there are a few rapids of easy to moderate difficulty, however these are sparsely distributed. Below is a list of the river's geographical features, including tributaries (shown in bold) and man-made features or townships (shown in italics), for bearings (from downstream to upstream):^[1]

See also

• Geology of Victoria
• Crossings of the Yarra River

References