Alice River
From headwaters that rise west of the Great Dividing Range in Dixie, the Alice River flows westward across Cape York Peninsula, draining a 12,943 square kilometre catchment, before discharging into the Mitchell River.
The Alice forms the northern border of Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park and is joined by twelve tributaries over its 332-kilometre course.
Frank Johnston, the manager of Koolata cattle station, named the river after his wife Alice circa 1886.
After John Dickie found gold in a tributary of the Alice in 1904, the goldfield was briefly known as the Alice Goldfield. It was subsequently renamed the Philp Goldfield.
The goldfield was originally named the Alice River Goldfield, but the genuine and original ALICE RIVER was that tributary of the Mitchell on which the BROTHERS JARDINE pitched their 44th Camp on 18th December, 1864, and fought the so-called "Battle of the Mitchell," and which has been traced by "run-surveys" up to longitude 142° 53' E. and latitude 15° 55' S., or 70 miles above the Jardines' Camp. There can be little doubt that the so-called Alice of the goldfield falls into the real Alice at the meridian of 142° 14' E., through the medium of the unnamed water-course which runs westward along the parallel of 15° 30' S., and this river should be named the PHILP.
(Robert Logan Jack, Northmost Australia, Vol. II, p. 456)
Missing links:
Dixie
Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park
Frank Johnson
Koolata
John Dickie
Philp Goldfield
