Wenlock River
Originally named the Batavia River and renamed in 1939, the Wenlock River rises on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range below Jacks Knob, west of Nundah homestead on the Cape York Peninsula and flows northwest through tropical savanna and wetlands to Port Musgrave on the western side of the peninsula. It was one of thirteen Queensland rivers free of dams, irrigation schemes and industrial development declared "wild rivers" by the Queensland government in 2010.
Over its 322-kilometre course, fifteen minor tributaries join the Wenlock, which drains a 7,526 square kilometre catchment. Rainforests bordering the Wenlock provide habitats for various wildlife, including the spotted cuscus and palm cockatoo. The river has one of Queensland’s largest breeding populations of the saltwater crocodile and, with forty-eight species in its waters, has Australia's most diverse population of freshwater fish.
The river's original name stemmed from a belief that it was the estuary Willem Jansz investigated in 1606. While Jansz's Batavia River was the first Australian stream entered by Europeans, the estuary Jansz explored was probably the Dulhunty-Ducie, which also enters Port Musgrave, rather than the Wenlock.
Seventeen years later, Port Musgrave was probably the inlet Jan Carstensz named in honour of Pieter de Carpentier, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, subsequently renamed after their headquarters in Batavia by officials of the Dutch East India Company officials.
None of the three Dutch expeditions that passed along the coast seemed to have sighted the Wenlock River outlet. Neither did Matthew Flinders, although he does refer to the Batavia River.
In 1864-65, Richardson, the surveyor in the Jardine expedition, assumed that the Wenlock's headwaters were those of the Batavia and gave the stream that name. Later investigation revealed that the river the Jardine expedition encountered entered Port Musgrave from the south and was not the Dutchmen's Batavia. However, by that stage, it appeared on maps of Queensland under that name and remained there until 1939, when an aerodrome in the locality might have been confused with the city in Java. Since a goldfield in the vicinity was already known by the name, Wenlock was adopted as the river's name. The former Batavia Aboriginal Mission became Mapoon.
Links to add:
Great Dividing Range
Jacks Knob
Nundah homestead
Dulhunty-Ducie
Pieter de Carpentier,
Dutch East Indies
Jardine brothers expedition
Batavia Aboriginal Mission
Mapoon.
