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WONDERS OF NATURE
Murray River. Nature miracle
Australia's only large river, the Murray, is a major waterway not only by Australian standards. The length of the Murray, like its main tributary, the Darling, is approximately equal to the Danube, and the total length of the Murray with the Darling is two hundred kilometers longer than that of the Volga. True, in terms of water abundance, the Australian river is significantly inferior to the European ones, but still its annual flow is almost half of the Danube.
For Australia, where most of the rivers dry up completely during the dry season, this is a huge watercourse. The origins of the Murray lie in the depths of the highest mountains of the continent - the Australian Alps, and the melting snowfields lying on their slopes provide this river with abundant food all year round. And the largest tributaries of the Murray - Darling and Murrumbidgee - originate much to the north, in the most beautiful part of the Great Dividing Range, called the Blue Mountains. The eastern slope of these amazingly picturesque mountains is composed of pink sandstones, in which fast-flowing rivers running down to the Tasman Sea cut steep-walled canyons. The entire watershed part of the ridge and its slopes were once occupied by a huge glacier, which left behind in the upper reaches of the canyons original extensions-amphitheatres - glacial cirques, now covered with lush flowering meadows. And the western slope of the Blue Mountains, facing the interior of the continent, is made up of fissured limestones, in which rains and melting snows have washed away many karst funnels, shafts and cavities. It is here that the famous Jenolan Caves are located - the main underground pearl of Australia. From most other karst caves in the world, the Jenolan ones are distinguished by the multi-coloredness of their most beautiful stone decorations. Stalactites, stalagmites, calcite curtains and draperies are not only white as usual, but also painted with iron oxide in various shades of pink, red and brown. Against this multi-colored background, the Cathedral Hall makes a particularly impressive impression, reaching a height of fifty meters and striking with the snowy whiteness of its longest stone iculextalactites, sometimes thin as threads, and sometimes powerful as oak trunks. One of the halls of the Jenolan caves reaches one hundred and eighty meters in length and eighty-five in width, with a height of up to thirty meters. The origins of Murray itself are located at the foot of the highest peak of the continent - Mount Kosciuszko. Of course, it is far from the Himalayan or Alpine peaks - the height of the "Australian Mont Blanc" does not reach two and a half kilometers, but still for Australia this is a unique peak, because it, the only one of the local mountains, is covered with snow all year round.
Below the zone of swampy meadows bordering snowfields, Murray flows through a kind of belt of undersized mountain forests. Slender straight trees in them reach a maximum of five centimeters in diameter and grow so densely that the traveler has to cut his way with an ax. And from a height of one thousand seven hundred meters, perhaps the most unusual and beautiful forests of Australia begin - the subtropical hylaea. These subtropical forests are as different as heaven from earth from the real giley - tropical rainforests that occupy the north of the Great Dividing Range and resemble the jungles of New Guinea or Indonesia. If in the jungles of the northern mountains of Australia, stuffy thickets of tall palm trees, bananas, pandanus and bamboo, intertwined with lianas, form impenetrable thickets with an undergrowth of ficuses, laurels and thorny shrubs, then in the Australian Alps the forest is lighter, more transparent and cooler, and the trees in it stand more spacious. Two tiers are clearly distinguished here: the upper one, made of sparsely standing mighty almond eucalyptus trees, reaching a height of one hundred and twenty meters, and ten meters in diameter, and the lower one, consisting of tree-like ferns "only" fifteen to twenty meters high (that is, from a five-story house). The originality of the appearance of these forests is given by numerous climbing ferns, which have stuck around tree trunks like lianas. Especially densely they cover with their green fringe powerful columns of evergreen Australian beeches. Another characteristic plant of the subtropical hyla is the climbing grass tetrarene. Here and there it forms tall green, densely intertwined barriers hanging from the trunks and branches of eucalyptus or beeches to the ground. The further the Murray flows to the west, the less precipitation falls on its banks. Therefore, humid subtropical forests are replaced in the foothills of the "Australian Alps" by light eucalyptus forests. The trees in them grow at a distance of thirty to forty meters from each other (so that everyone has enough moisture). Eucalyptus leaves are always turned edge-on to the sun, so it's easier to breathe here than in a gloomy hylaea. Instead of rotting fallen leaves, a continuous grass cover turns green underfoot on the soil exposed to the sun's rays. Here and there rise amusing-looking grassy trees with a short trunk crowned with a lush spreading "hairstyle" of narrow, long, like blades of grass, leaves. Even further downstream, the forests become quite rare and finally turn into savannahs. Here, between individual eucalyptus trees, acacias and bizarre trees with bottle-shaped trunks swollen at the bottom, dense thorny thickets of shrubs are scattered, which received the name "srub" in Australia. Of the several varieties of this unpleasant "decoration" of the Australian savannas and semi-deserts, two, called malli scrub and mulga scrub, cause the greatest trouble to travelers. Mally scrub is formed almost exclusively by one dwarf species of eucalyptus - "malli" Its branches grow closer than the stalks of reeds or bamboo, and the path through the malli scrub has to be paved with an ax. Even more terrible for the traveler are the thorny thickets of mulga-scrab, which consists mainly of dense bushes of dwarf acacia. These acacias are armed with sharp thorns and in some places form such terrible, almost insurmountable barriers that a caravan that encounters a mulgascrab on its way has to bypass it, sometimes making a many-kilometer detour. Going down the Murray, the traveler naturally gets acquainted with the diversity of the amazing animal world of Australia. In humid subtropical forests, tree kangaroos deftly move along the branches, hanging down their long tails. Not far from them, you can see the cutest inhabitant of the local forests - the marsupial koala bear, which looks like a toy teddy bear. With his slow movements, this good-natured fat man resembles an American sloth. The abundance and variety of birds in these forests is striking, among which stand out large white cockatoo parrots with lush tufts and loudly laughing kookaburras - relatives of our kingfishers, only twice as large. And below, under the trees, a much more unpleasant meeting can await the traveler. Cassowaries living in the bushes, close relatives of African ostriches and the swift-footed emus inhabiting the local savannahs, although they are inferior to their counterparts in growth, are far superior to them in courage and aggressiveness. rip open the stomach or cut off the hand of an unlucky tourist. In general, the dangers in the Australian forests are no less than in the jungles of Africa or on the shores of the Amazon. Not to mention poisonous snakes or deadly bulldog ants, thirty bites of which mean imminent death, even such a cute and innocent at first glance creature as a platypus poses a serious danger to the traveler. An injection of poisonous spurs on its hind legs can paralyze a person. There are fewer dangerous animals in light forests. It is here that the main habitat of the koala, this fluffy symbol of Australia. There is also another well-known "Australian" here - a charming and timid echidna. In the event of a threat, it instantly burrows into the ground or curls up into a prickly ball, like a hedgehog. Echidna feels great not only in the forest, but also in scrub thickets - wherever there are ants or other insects. Not bad life here and kangaroo rats. These amusing creatures build large grass nests for themselves on the ground, for which they collect "building materials" with the help of a special comb of coarse hair that they have at the end of their tail. With this comb, the kangaroo rat drags dry grass behind it, like a rake. And in the lower reaches of the Murray, in the vast savannas, expanse for kangaroos and emus. Numerous flocks of budgerigars live near the shores of drying lakes, and in the lakes themselves there lives a unique lungfish ceratod fish, which, in addition to gills, also has one lung. When, during a period of drought, the lake or river where he swam dries up, the ceratod switches to pulmonary breathing, which allows him to survive a difficult time. The Murray is a large navigable river. Passenger boats can climb almost two thousand kilometers along it to the city of Albury at the very foot of the Australian Alps. Thanks to snow supply and the Hume Reservoir built in the upper reaches of the river, the water level in Murray is quite sufficient for navigation throughout the year. Quite another matter - Darling. Although this tributary is two hundred kilometers longer than the main river, its full flow depends entirely on rains. Therefore, in the dry period of the year, it turns in the lower reaches into a chain of separate reservoirs a kilometer and a half long and a hundred meters wide. The Darling becomes a full-fledged tributary of the Murray only during the rainy season, when the flood comes. At this time, in some places it spills over tens of kilometers. Tourists visiting Australia usually choose one of the two most exotic areas from their point of view. This is either the northeast of the continent, where tropical rain forests lushly green off the coast, on the slopes of the Great Dividing Range, and nearby, in the sea, the underwater wonders of the Great Barrier Reef are hidden, or the giant Ayers Rock located in the heart of the Australian deserts. However, a traveler who wants to know the nature of Australia in its most striking manifestations should set off from Sydney through the "Australian Alps", so that, after descending from the snowy slopes of Mount Kosciuszko, follow the main Australian river to the windy beaches of the Great Australian Bight and finish your route in the main city of South Australia - Adelaide. Approximately in these places, only a little to the south, the path of the Julvernian heroes lay, crossing Australia in search of Captain Grant. And, like them, a tourist who dares to make such an intersection will truly see and learn all the diversity of the natural landscapes of this unusual continent, and will not fly home with the feeling that he has traveled half the world in order to carry in his memory only a tiny piece of a huge wonderful world called Australia... Author: B.Wagner
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