Australia’s shallow northern pocket was named for a VOC governor
The Gulf of Carpentaria indents northern Australia, closed on three sides and open north to the Arafura Sea between Australia and New Guinea. Roughly 300,000 square kilometres of water sit mostly 55–66 metres deep—never more than 69 metres—across a mouth 590 kilometres wide.
Its northern edge is conventionally drawn from Slade Point at the tip of Cape York across to Cape Arnhem on the Gove Peninsula. Inside that line the basin widens to 675 kilometres and runs more than 700 kilometres from north to south, with tides of only two to three metres. At the height of the last ice age, some 18,000 years ago, oceans stood roughly 120 metres lower, the whole gulf was dry ground, and a broad, shallow lake filled its middle.
That lost landscape left a surprise. Sonar surveys by Geoscience Australia aboard the RV Southern Surveyor in 2003 and 2005 found patch reefs spread over at least 300 square kilometres of the southern gulf, their tops about 28.6 metres down and invisible to satellites. They grew under cooler conditions with lower seas; today only fringing reefs and scattered coral colonies live here.
Willem Janszoon became the first European to reach the area, and Australia, during his voyage of 1605–06. Jan Carstenszoon followed in 1623 and chose the name to honour Pieter de Carpentier, then running the Dutch East Indies. Abel Tasman traced the shore in 1644, and Matthew Flinders charted it in 1802 and 1803. Overland, Burke and Wills left Melbourne in August 1860 and reached the Bynoe River mouth in February 1861, yet both perished heading home. Aboriginal languages of the region include Kayardild, tied to Mornington Shire.
Groote Eylandt is the largest island, Arnhem Land lies west and Cape York east. The flat Gulf Country to the south carries the Carpentaria tropical savanna, described as the largest intact savanna woodland on Earth. Rain falls mostly from December to March, and around three cyclones a year strike between November and April. Each September and October the rolling Morning Glory cloud appears near Burketown at dawn. Seagrass supports shrimp trawling, while zinc, lead and silver from the McArthur River mine ship out through the gulf.
Source: Gulf of Carpentaria
