History
The first people to discover the river were the traditional owners of the areas around the river, including the Nyikina peoples to the west, the Walmadjari and Konejandi peoples to the east, who have lived in the area for at least 40,000 years. The local peoples know the area as Mardoowarra, the river and its vast floodplains are of great spiritual, cultural, medicinal and ecological significance.
The first European to visit the Fitzroy River was George Grey in 1837 aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. The river was subsequently given its European name by Lt J L Stokes on 26/2/1838 after Captain Robert FitzRoy R.N. The Fitzroy River flows for 733 kilometres (455 mi) from the King Leopold and Mueller Ranges into King Sound south of Derby, and has a catchment area of 93,829 square kilometres (36,228 sq mi)
Read more about this topic: Fitzroy River (Western Australia)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)