Cynthia B odarte, age 13, of Los Angeles, CA

What is Australia’s longest river?

The continent of the emu and the kangaroo has a river 1,600 miles long„ which is a little more than half the length of the Mississippi, This is the Murray River, biggest and most important of Australian waterways  A river of this size does not seem enough for a continent almost as big as the United States 

There are several shorter rivers draining into the  sea and countless streams drain inland into salty lakes  Many of these, however, carry water only after the rains It is this scanty supply of fresh water which makes most of the interior of Australia a desert land  The situation is helped, however by ground water under the dry areas which can be made to gush forth from artesian wells