Assignment Title: River system and Settlement Distribution in Cape York Student Name: Le Yao Student Number: 202219062 Tutorial Class: Friday 8:00-12:05a.m. Cape York is a huge peninsula located in the northeastern Australia and is considered as the largest unspoiled wildness in northern Australia (Russell A. Mittermeier et al., 2002). However, as the EWB Challenge Organization (n.d.) has mentioned that while more and more tourists begin to camp on the country, a kind of polluted water called greywater is released illegally to the environment. The greywater has become a serious pollution issue in Cape York and needed to be resolved. In order to reuse or repurpose the greywater, it is important to figure out the distribution of the river and human settlement in Cape York so that it will be capable to get the flow route and resource of the greywater. River Distribution Cape York peninsula, also called Cape York, has a complex stream system including underground water and surface water as well as sea water. According to the map of Cape York (Queensland Government, 2019) at figure 1, we can see the river system in Cape York is quite complicated and the rivers there radiate from a central line. Besides, among these rivers, there are Figure 1 Figure 2 several main rivers that have far more streamflow than other rivers. Seeing the histogram (Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, 2019) which reflect the annual flows of rivers in Cape York at figure 2, the Normanby, Pascoe, Holroyd, Archer, Wenlock, Jardine are the major rivers in the local river system. As we can look up the topographic of Queensland (Department of Resources, Queensland, 2022), due to the mountain which lies on the east side of the peninsula, rivers here flow straightly towards the sea from west to east or the opposite. Moreover, since the mountain lies on the east side, it is easy to deduce that the rivers on the east side flows fast and the rivers on the west side instead. That’s the basic background information of the rivers in Cape York Peninsula. Settlement Distribution Even though Cape York is such a huge peninsula covered an area of more than 200,000 sq km, the general population of Cape York is only 7,803 (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2021). Furthermore, it is important to note that most of these people lives in some settlements alongside the river instead of the unspoiled wildness in the peninsula. According to a travel guide website called Destination Cape York (Katrin, n.d.), there are just few sizeable towns in Cape York, and the size of them decreases from the south to the north. The major towns are in the southeastern and northwestern of the peninsula, e.g., Cooktown in the southeast & Weipa in the northwest. The settlements in Cape York are so small that they can’t be called “cities”. Also, it is worth mentioning that the second largest city Cairns lies beside the south of the peninsula so lots of people in Cape York will choose to settle in the Cairns (Katrin, n.d.). References Russell, A. M., Cristina, G.M., Patricio, R.G., John, P., & Gustavo F. (2002). Wildness: Earth’s Last Wild Places. Conservation International. EWB Challenge (n.d.). Design Area 5: Water Management. https://ewbchallenge.org/challenge/centre-for-appropriate-technology/designarea-5-water-management/ The Department of Environment and Science Brisbane, Queensland. (Oct 14, 2019). Map 3 CAPE YORK PENINSULA REGION [Map]. Queensland Government. https://www.resources.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/107506/cape-yorkregion-map.pdf The Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, Queensland. (June, 2019). Mean annual flows (megalitres per annum) at gauging stations for Cape York rivers. [Infographic]. Queensland Government. https://ewb.app.box.com/s/t4po7oaadcz47vegvher0vdduwzxph6q The Department of Resources, Queensland. (2022). QTopo – online topographic maps. Queensland Government. https://qtopo.information.qld.gov.au Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). 2021 Cape York, Census All persons QuickStats. https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/315011396 Katrin, H. (n.d.). Cape York Towns. Destination Cape York. https://www.capeyorkaustralia.com/cape-york-towns.html
