Finke River - Antiquity of The Finke River

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 event referred to as the Alice Springs Orogeny which peaked between 400 and 300 million years ago (Devonian to Carboniferous 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 Mesozoic Era, part of the Great Artesian Basin.

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 Todd 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.