Rivers
The East Alligator River is approximately 160 km long. After rising in the northern part of the Arnhem Land Plateau, it flows with tributary streams towards the north-west through magnificent canyons towards the Van Diemen Gulf which it meets at Point Farewell.
The South Alligator River is also about 160 km long. It rises north of Mount Stow also on the Arnhem Land plateau. It flows north-westerly in a valley containing a number of disused uranium mines developed between 1955 and 1965. It also finishes in the Van Diemen Gulf of the Timor Sea.
The West Alligator River rises in the lowlands and is 80 km long. The Wildman River also flows in the region. The river system has a number of spectacular waterfalls including the Jim Jim Falls on Jim Jim Creek and the Twin Falls on Twin Falls Creek.
The rivers have created the alluvial plains, including the mangrove swamps, in the past 20,000 years.
Read more about this topic: Alligator Rivers
Famous quotes containing the word rivers:
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, then we remembered Zion.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm CXXXVII (l. CXXXVII, 1)
“Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)