Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Where does Castlereagh River begin?
The Castlereagh rises 20km west of Coonabarabran in the heart of the Warrumbungle mountains[1] at an elevation of about 850 metres.[4] From its commencement upstream in the mountains the river initially flows east through the town of Coonabarabran. It then arcs round south and southwesterly to the village of Ulamambri, then south to Binnaway, and SSW to the small town of Mendooran which lies at the eastern side of the river's hook-shape. From here the Castlereagh flows in a westerly direction at the flattened bottom of the hook and then turns north-westerly towards the town of Gilgandra. From Gilgandra it continues to run northwesterly across the plains through Gulargambone and Coonamble, then continuing across expansive plains, with no urban centres, where elevations are less than 200m, until it joins the Macquarie River at its uppermost reaches beyond the Macquarie Marshes. Its confluence with the Macquarie is about 65km SW of Walgett.[2] Not far from the Castlereagh/Macquarie confluence the Macquarie itself joins the Barwon River at a place about halfway between Walgett and Brewarrina.[5][4]
More early evidence of the Aborigines mixing and/or working with European shepherds and labourers at the Castlereagh came in 1840 from a ticket-of-leave man named William Jones who was then an umbrella maker in Sussex St, Sydney. Jones had agreed to be interpreter in the trial of a Wiradjuri man from the Lachlan River who was not charged under his own name but under the European nickname of "Neville's Billy". William Jones deposed that the language of the prisoner "was the same as that spoken on the banks of the Castlereagh River about three hundred miles from Sydney where he, Jones, had been for about eight years, and where he had learned the language."[30]
Castlereagh was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of New South Wales originally created in 1904, partly replacing Coonamble and named after the Castlereagh River. In 1920, with the introduction of proportional representation, it was absorbed into Wammerawa, along with Mudgee and Liverpool Plains. It was recreated in 1927 and abolished in 1991.
A devastating flood in January 1874 killed thousands of head of livestock, and damaged many buildings in Binnaway, Mendooran, Gilgandra and Coonamble. There had been incessant rain in the area of the Upper Castlereagh for three weeks (most of January) leading up to the day the river broke its banks. Over the same few days severe floods also occurred on other river systems: flooding on the Talbragar River at Dubbo was the worst experienced to that time,[48] the town of Singleton was completely flooded, Maitland was flooded, as was Cassilis.[49] On Saturday, 24 January, the Castlereagh River commenced rising rapidly, with rain falling heavily all day. During Sunday, 25 January the river continued rising and at Gilgandra on Monday 26th at 5 p.m. it had attained its full height.[50] It was reported from Binnaway that the Castlereagh rose 28 feet in seven hours from 5am till twelve, and a great many sheep were lost in the area.[49] At Mendooran, the townspeople took refuge in the loft of the stables at the Royal Hotel. The flood destroyed many of Binnaway's buildings.[51]
The Castlereagh Highway was named in 1954 after the Castlereagh River which it parallels for most of its journey north from with the river named in honour of Lord Castlereagh.
River systems are fundamentally important to Aboriginal people. As Professor Marcia Langton has described, the Aboriginal people's holistic view of the world creates connection to waterscapes as spiritual, social and jural spaces just as much as physical domains - just like the same principles that connect people to landscape. Established laws that come from the sacred ancestral past "allocate rights and interests among particular people, to water sources". These are "rights and responsibilities, according to religious principles." [21] The Castlereagh River passes through hundreds of miles of country and several different nations of the Aboriginal people. Therefore, the rights regarding the Castlereagh may have been quite complex.
Despite European occupation, Aborigines of the Castlereagh did manage to keep some of their traditional practices and beliefs alive to the end of the C19th. R.H. Matthews, a government surveyor who worked for twenty years in north-west NSW and became a documenter of Aboriginal life and culture, recorded that "in 1893 there was a great gathering of the local Aboriginal people of the Castlereagh with the people of the Macquarie, the Bogan and the Barwon Rivers for a great initiation ceremony".[23]:11
Aborigines continued working for the pastoralists along the Castlereagh through into the 1850's and 1860's, and this was shown with occasional references in the press. See for example "Jackey, a native lad of about seventeen" who was reported in 1852 to have "for years been in the service of Mr Fitzsimmons of 'Gora', Castlereagh River." 'Gora' station was at the foot of the Warrumbuungles, near Bugaldie.[32]
In early July, the party returned from the Macquarie Marshes to Mt Harris, 48km (30 miles) N-NW of present-day Warren. Seemingly unable to further follow the course of the Macquarie, Oxley had to change his plans. He decided to send Evans ahead, with a small party, to scout a north-easterly route across the plains, and report back. Beginning on 8 July 1818, Evans would end up traversing a large loop, north-easterly then south-easterly, then westerly and back to his starting point. In the north-easterly direction, he first crossed the Castlereagh River around Combara, between Gulargambone and Coonamble.[37] The party then continued on a shallower east-north-easterly direction until reaching the foothills of the Warrumbungle Mountains. From here, Evans turned south-westerly to head back to Oxley's encampment at Mt. Harris, travelling across ‘an open plain, over which was rather better travelling than we had latterly experienced’.[38] This route brought his party back to the Castlereagh River at a point south of his first crossing, in an area between the future villages of Armatree and Curban (10 miles apart).[37] As he approached the Castlereagh River he described the country as ‘low and wet’, with the journey being ‘dreadfully bad and marshy’.[37] The country he was crossing over is today considered rich pasture and farming land, covering the areas known as Tonderbrine, the western side of Tooraweenah, the Yarrandale area and Hillside.
Estimates of the length of the course of the Castlereagh River from its commencement to its mouth vary from 541 kilometres (336mi),[2] 549km,[3] and 566km.[1] Over its course it drops over 600m.
The Castlereagh River has a highly variable flow, and often has from very low flow to no flow at all.[3] The sandy riverbed of the Castlereagh is frequently dry in many places. John Oxley's expedition of 1818 came across the Castlereagh near Coonamble running so high and fast that it was six days until water levels dropped sufficiently to allow the expeditionary party to cross. Ten years later Charles Sturt arrived in the same general area during a ravaging drought to find the Castlereagh dry, and continuing completely dry for miles on end downstream to its junction with the Macquarie River with only occasional waterholes to be found nearby.
Europeans were occupying the Castlereagh at least by early 1833. That year, Robert Lowe of Mudgee sent cattle to an area between Gilgandra and Curban on a run he named as "Yalcogrin", also fed by Ulomogo Creek, a tributary of the Castlereagh.[40] In 1840, convict William Jones gave testimony in court that he had been on the Castlereagh River for eight years and learnt the language of the local people (Wiradjuri); if this was not an exaggeration then he had gone there in 1831 or 1832.
It is not correct that the Castlereagh River is an underground river (subterranean river) or an 'upside down' river.[15] However, water that once was in the river bed on the surface does flow through the extensive sands under the riverbed. This water is therefore part of the underground soil, and is not separate from it as a truly underground river is separate from the soil. The fact of water existing under the riverbed was known by Europeans at least in the early part of the last quarter of the 1800s, if not before, as evidenced in statements given to the Water Conservation Commission Inquiry at Dubbo in 1885.[16]
The Castlereagh River is located in the central–western district of New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the Macquarie-Castlereagh catchment within the Murray–Darling basin and is an unregulated river, meaning no dams or storage have been built on it to control flows.[3] On a map of NSW, the Castlereagh has a distinctive appearance among the north-western rivers for its fish-hook-like shape: from upstream in the north at its confluence with the Macquarie River it extends southwards to a hook-shape, flattened-out at the base, which curves to the right (east and northwards) through to the tip of the hook in the Warrumbungle Mountains at the river's source.
The Castlereagh River is joined by dozens of minor tributaries in its journey towards the very upper Macquarie. The Major Rivers Database of NSW lists seventy streams, (including effluent streams that receive water from the river) of the Castlereagh.[19]
The Cooks River/Castlereagh Ironbark Forest (CRCIF) in the Sydney Basin Ecological Community contains open forest and low woodland. It was gazetted as a critically Endangered Ecological Community on 10 May 2002. There are just 1011 hectares left.
Downstream from Gilgandra, the Castlereagh runs through alluvial plains. These are flat landforms with alluvial soil that has been created from sediments being deposited over a long period of time by one or more rivers flowing down from highland regions.[6] Groundwater is found in the alluvial sediments on the plains in the lower Castlereagh catchment and is generally associated with the ancient channel of the river.[7] The Castlereagh has a very sandy bed throughout its course, with especially wide outer banks on the plains. Charles Sturt, after travelling along the Castlereagh in 1828 from Coonamble to its junction with the Macquarie, noted that there was not one pebble or stone to be picked up in its bed, which was dry for the whole length he travelled.[8]
The Castlereagh sits over the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) and within a re-charge area for the waters of the GAB (where the GAB waters are replenished from above ground). Areas of re-charge are divided into zones, called ‘sources’ and the Castlereagh River is within the Southern Recharge Groundwater Source. This source, together with the Eastern Recharge Groundwater Source, is characterised by better quality groundwater than other zones.
In a very short period — of possibly not more than a dozen years — the Aboriginal way of life on the Castlereagh was heavily curtailed. Written evidence in 1841 from pastoralist James Walker showed this, in his response to a circular from the Commissioner of Crown Lands enquiring about pastoralists' interactions with Aborigines. Walker lived at Wallerawang, near Lithgow, but held many pastoral licences over vast stations in the Castlereagh River area from Mendooran (where 'Pampoo' was located) to Coonamble. His response included a single, but telling, comment on the effect of European occupation on Aborigines: " ... since stock was first taken out there [i.e. to the Castlereagh] we have abridged all their natural sources of existence."[29]
Further upstream, the Castlereagh, Macquarie and Bogan rivers run "more or less parallel as they cross the plains, where creeks and streams break away from the main rivers, making connections between the Macquarie and the Bogan, the Macquarie and the Barwon, and the Castlereagh and the Barwon. As the waterways approach the Barwon River the interconnected streams, as well as lagoons and channels, support extensive flood-dependent woodlands and grasslands".[7] In this extreme northern section of the catchment the floodplain between the Barwon and Castlereagh Rivers is intersected by Womat and Wanourie Creeks, which carry flows from the Barwon to the Castlereagh River during major floods.[9]
The Castlereagh River and the ground water of the Great Artesian Basin are highly connected. The water is not flowing as a separate and distinguishable underground river flow, but is moving initially through the permeable alluvial sandbeds and then through paleochannels to deeper groundwater aquifers.
Increasing pressure on the resources the Aborigines needed for their way of life made them more dependent on Europeans and exposed them to European vices. At the beginning of 1853 when a station worker was murdered by his wife near Curban at the Castlereagh, the hutkeepers and shepherds present had been drinking heavily, supplied by a sly grog seller but also present at a fireplace with the deceased were "two black gins lying at his feet and some blackfellows lying beside him".[33]
In 1848 a well regarded Surveyor, George Boyle White, 'traced' or mapped a large section of the Castlereagh from Binnaway to about Gulargambone. White had previously been employed by the government as a surveyor for twelve years, and had accompanied Surveyor-General Mitchell on an interior surveying expedition. White had a particular interest in surveying rivers and in 1847 Mitchell gave him a general remit to go over the mountains and "start the feature survey of that part of the colony", in order to "traverse the water courses and ranges that they may be charted."[43] The first river he started on was the Castlereagh.
The Castlereagh’s alluvial sandbeds make up what is called the "hyperheic zone". This is the region of saturated sediment below, or adjacent to, a river where surface water and groundwater are actively mixing and exchanged. The movement of the groundwater in the Castlereagh through its alluvial sands is said to be a hyporheic process. In the Castlereagh, the further transit of surface water to the aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin is then enabled through the ancient paleochannels underlying the Castlereagh, and this water movement is a large-scale hyporheic process. (Hutchinson and Webster 1998).
Two claims are often anecdotally made about flows in the Castlereagh: