Goulburn RiverArticle Free Pass Goulburn River, river that,
together with the Campaspe and Loddon rivers, drains most of
central Victoria, Australia. Rising on Mount Singleton in the
Eastern Highlands northeast of Melbourne in Fraser National
Park, the Goulburn flows generally north for 352 miles (563 km)
through the Eildon, Goulburn, and Waranga reservoirs and Lake
Nagambie to join the Murray River 7 miles (11 km) northeast of
Echuca. The principal settlements in its valley are Seymour and
Shepparton. The river, crossed by the explorers Hamilton Hume
and William Hovell in 1824, was named for a British under
secretary of state for the colonies. Pastoralism was the
dominant land use in the region until succeeded by wheat farming
in the 1870s. Irrigation, introduced in the 1880s, allows fruit
and vegetable farming, dairying, and sheep raising to be
practiced in the area. Irrigation, however, has also caused a
rise in water tables consisting of saline groundwater, and, as a
result, the increased salinity of the