The South Australian Rivers Series
Warning!! - there may be locations along the Highway with narrow verges affording less room to park off the road. Please take care at these locations, especially if you have children with you. Warning!!
Welcome to this series of caches along the Karoonda Highway. At the time of placement all containers (except 1) are the same, and most have been placed in a consistent manner. You are looking for a 100ml plastic screw-top container painted OZGrumpy green and containing a logbook only – bring your own pen or stamp. Take care of the bush and animals you encounter in this series. Mostly take care of yourself, in some places you will experience little to no phone reception (let alone data), so make and take provisions.
Please take care when putting the lid back on the containers to ensure they seal. Please make an effort to put it back where you found it. Unlike the AMP series there is a high chance these will creep over time. The number in the hint is how many feet the cache was off the ground when I originally placed it.
Research and Information
When I thought of this subject I expected it to be a quick list to build. Not so. A good deal of research was required as there is no one entity that keeps a comprehensive list. The South Australian water authority only lists rivers it uses or manages. Water quality organisations only list those they have water quality monitoring sites on. Certain online encyclopedias are very unreliable, listing creeks and rivers together and only including information if someone was interested or spent the effort. Another super-comprehensive site listing over 21,000 rivers and creeks in Australia (Digital Atlas of Australia - which I acknowledge as my main source) strangely missed a few watercourses including Port River. Most web resources completely ignore Kangaroo Island which has many rivers, of which America River is not one of them for it is a town at the mouth of a lagoon. In this cache series, all creeks are excluded from this list even if they are larger than some of the rivers listed here. If it did not have river in its name, it was excluded. If you find or know of a South Australian river that is not in this series, please let me know.
It is difficult to determine the length of ephemeral rivers especially those in the far north of the state. Many of these rarely see water, and their course is largely determined by the amount of floodwater flowing at the time. Course lengths are indeed just an estimate for these rivers.
October 2021 Update
On 31 October 2021 I updated the hides for numbers 1 through 43. These now have tape on the outside of the containers to protect them from the sun. The containers are now hung from metal rings (or pvc tape) to allow finders to return them to the same location. Two containers were replaced. I hope to update the remaining 11 sometime in December.
South Australian Rivers - Alberga River
Outlet/Basin: Lake Eyre
Course: 690km.
Outlet Coordinates are S27.10422 E135.52976.
The Alberga River (also known as the Alberga Creek) is an ephemeral river that is part of the Lake Eyre basin located in the Far North region of the Australian state of South Australia. The river rises near Indulkana, north of the Oodnadatta Track and about 40 km northwest of the town of Oodnadatta and northeast of Marla.
The Alberga generally flows east by south, joined by eight minor tributaries and three waterholes before reaching its confluence with the Macumba River near the town of Alberga. The river descends 355 metres over its 690 km course, and is crossed by The Ghan near its source.
The Alberga River was discovered on 23 March 1860 by John McDouall Stuart who considered it to be a branch of the Neales River. The river was named by William Christie Gosse in 1873.