Nogoa River
From headwaters in the Carnarvon Range, the Nogoa River flows in a generally northeasterly direction towards Emerald. Twenty-nine minor tributaries join the Nogoa over its 569-kilometre course before its confluence with the Comet River north of Comet to form the Mackenzie River.
The river's 27,690-square-kilometre catchment is largely Gayiri Country, within the Central Highlands Regional Council's boundaries.
Lake Maraboon, formed when the Fairbairn Dam was built on the Nogoa in 1972 to supply water for the Emerald Irrigation Area, is Queensland's second-largest dam.
Sir Thomas Mitchell became the first European known to have sighted the Nogoa on 19 July 1846. While Mitchell noted the river's name, his Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia In Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (p. 238) provides no details of its origin:
The view back to the Pass was very fine, for the rocks and wood were so blended on the bold summits, as to present sublime studies for the artist. Far to the westward, an interior line of cliffy range resembled a sea beach, presenting a crescent, concave on that side, apparently the limit to the basin of the Nogoa, and the dividing range between eastern and western waters. Our Pass seemed to be the only outlet through the labyrinths behind us. Even the open plains beyond them were visible in a yellow streak above the precipices. Far beyond these plains, Mount Faraday was distinctly visible, on the horizon of the landscape.
