River
Cooper Creek
1,300 km from source to mouth · Australia.
AustraliaFlows into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre5th longest in Australia
In numbers
Length
1,300km
Average flow
82m³/s
Basin
297,547km²
Drop
197m
from 182 m to -15 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
1,300 km of river and 7 stops on the way: 0 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 182 m
- 257 kmThomson Rivertributary
- 257 kmBarcoo Rivertributary
- 832 kmBoggy Lake6.8 km²
- 880 kmLake Coogiecooginna7.5 km²
- 967 kmLake Appadare1.4 km²
- 1,016 kmLake Pandruannie1.7 km²
- 1,053 kmLake Killamperpunna15 km²
- 1,300 kmKati Thanda–Lake Eyreat -15 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
Australian river
At the mouth it carries 82 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 30 seconds. It drops from 182 m to -15 m, 0.2 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 297,547 km², about the size of PH. 9,894 people live in it. Highest water: from March to April; lowest: from September to December. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- From April to June and from August to SeptemberThe best months to visit
Cooper Creek, month by month
Highest water: from March to April
Lowest water: from September to December. Best months to visit: from April to June and from August to September.
From about 0.0 m³/s in the lowest month to 230 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
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The basin
Cooper Creek: the basin in numbers
245,844 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 9,894people live in the basin
- 0/km²people per km²
- 216maverage altitude of the basin
- 368mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 22.6°Caverage air temperature
- 3%protected areas
- 0.1%covered by lakes
What covers the basin
- 2% Forest
- 76% Pasture
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Cooper Creek: what you find on the way
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.6 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Cooper Creek in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
5lakes on its wayLakeyas
Lakes and reservoirs (5)
Lakes it flows through, by Lakeyas
- Boggy Lakekm 8576.8km²
- Lake Coogiecooginnakm 9077.5km²
- Lake Appadarekm 9961.4km²
- Lake Pandruanniekm 1,0461.7km²
- Lake Killamperpunnakm 1,08515km²
Lakeyas is coming soonOpen Lakeyas ↗
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Cooper Creek in pictures



Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
Tributaries (3)
Also: Barcoo River, Thomson River, Strzelecki Creek
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q432278) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Lakeyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.