The Diamantina River rises in Kirbys Nob, east of Selwyn, Queensland and flows (seasonally) for 800 kms southwest past Birdsville to Goyder Lagoon in South Australia, draining a basin of 158,000 square kms.
The average amount of water discharged from the Diamantina River at Birdsville would fill a backyard swimming pool in one second, ranging from 1,400,000 litres per second in flood to nothing in dry years.
The Diamantina River was named after Diamantina Roma Bowen, wife of Queensland’s first Governor. In the early 1870s, itinerant merchant Mathew Flynn crossed the Diamantina River and established a rough depot 3.2kms to the north of Birdsville, above the rivers’ flood level.
Here grew a town known as ‘Diamantina Crossing’, later surveyed as Birdsville.
