Richmond River
The Richmond River is a river in the northeastern corner of New South Wales, Australia. It runs for approximately 170 kilometres from the foothills of the Border Ranges past the towns of Kyogle, Casino, Coraki, Woodburn, where it turns northward and empties into the Pacific Ocean at Ballina.
It is one of the three rivers that are generally considered to constitute the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales, the other two being the Clarence River to the south and the Tweed River to the north.
Captain Henry John Rous identified the mouth of the river in 1828 as he sailed along the coast from Sydney to Moreton Bay. Rous entered the river and sailed about 20 miles (32 km) up river. He subsequently named the river Richmond after the fifth Duke of Richmond. Later that year the explorer Allan Cunningham reached the river by land.[1]
The river is only navigable for a short way up its length, possibly as far as Coraki. It is heavily used for irrigation along its length. Several weirs have been constructed in order to mitigate the effects of flooding, most notably at Casino.
A major tributary of the Richmond River is the Wilson River, which flows through the city of Lismore.
The freshwater reaches of the Richmond River once supported a unique species of cod, similar to Murray cod and closely related to eastern freshwater cod. Unfortunately this unique native fish became extinct somewhere between the 1930s and 1950s due to habitat degradation and gross overfishing, including with dynamite during the building of the local railway line.