BURKETOWN, OLD TRAVEL
Despite seemingly overwhelming odds, Burketown has survived as a quintessentially outback community with strong rural ties and an economy powered largely by tourism as ‘The Barramundi Capital of Australia’.
The Gulf Savannah
Burketown lies on the northern edge of the Gulf Savannah, a vast expanse of flat, low-lying plains stretching from the Great Dividing Range to the Northern Territory border. At around 200,000sq km, it is one of the largest savannah bioregions in the world, blanketed by native grasses, acacia shrubs and open woodlands of eucalypts and paperbarks.
The undulating plains south of Burketown are drained by several major rivers – the Gregory, Nicholson and Leichhardt – which have their headwaters among the plateaus and ranges hundreds of kilometres inland. The Gregory is the largest perennial river in this semi-arid region and one of the few permanently flowing rivers in the northwest of Queensland. The Gregory joins the Nicholson River south-west of Burketown and together they discharge into the Gulf of Carpentaria at Pasco Inlet. Unlike the Gregory and the Nicholson, the Leichhardt flows intermittently and its upper reaches retract to a series of waterholes in the dry season.
The rivers’ lower reaches flow across
