Most cities in Australia are located near rivers, estuaries and deltas, right? why

In fact, it is very common that most cities in the world are located by rivers, not just in Australia. The Murray Darling River is a series of cities along the river, which is a special case. Most of the rivers along the southeast coast are just a city on every big and stable river, most of them are small cities with thousands to tens of thousands of people, and only a few state capitals are large.

Most cities in Australia are located by the river, especially the early important cities. On the one hand, due to the convenient access to fresh water, the salt content of groundwater in Australia is generally high, and most of it is not suitable for drinking. Compared with China, residents prefer to use surface water as drinking water. On the other hand, inland water transport was once an important mode of transport in Australia's early development and settlement choice. Before the 20th century, many cities relied on inland steamboats to transport goods.

Many cities are located in the estuary area, because there are many coastal cities and few inland cities in Australia. There are not many large rivers in Australia, most of which are relatively short, with small water volume, unstable flow and limited navigation capacity in inland areas. At that time, Australia's colonial economy was very dependent on international trade, and all kinds of necessities had to be shipped from Britain. Early land transportation was underdeveloped, and ocean transportation and coastal water transportation were very important. Estuary is the joint point of maritime transportation and inland transportation, and cities located at the estuary are convenient to collect various economic resources in the basin and transport them to all parts of the world.

Australia's adventure history is also one of the reasons. Australia is a continent of immigrants, and it is typical to settle down first and then explore. The earliest expeditions in Australia were all along the coast. By 1800, the British navy had found out the outline of the entire continental coast and locked the position of most estuaries. Some estuaries are hidden and were discovered later. In contrast, 1800 inland exploration has not yet started. Although the British began to live in Australia in 1788, they knew nothing about the inland. They really crossed the Australian outback in the second half of19th century, and did not complete the inland land exploration until 1900 when the Commonwealth was founded.

Murray river and Darling River are the names of two tributaries of a river. The second half of Murray-Darling River, especially after entering South Australia, is becoming less and less salty. The estuary of this river has a relatively dry climate and poor water quality, which is not suitable for building cities. There is no city under Murray Bridge, and there are not many people there. Regarding the population distribution, please refer to my answer to another netizen.

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In addition, I disagree with wuben090' s explanation. In fact, Australian agriculture is dominated by animal husbandry and dry land agriculture, lacking the tradition of irrigated agriculture. Please refer to my answer to another netizen's question about Australian agriculture.

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