Interpreting surface water site numbers

Australia has been divided into a series of drainage divisions, which are in turn divided into river basins. Across Australia there are 12 drainage divisions and 245 river basins. Victoria has two drainage divisions:

• Murray Darling Basin Division (Division 4) and
• South East Coast Division (Division 2)

Both these drainage divisions extend outside Victoria.

In Victoria, there are 29 river basins across these two drainage divisions.

The Australian Water Resource Council (AWRC) defined these drainage divisions to be both the major topographic features of the continent and the main climatic zones to give broadly homogenous hydrologic regions.

The river basin boundaries are defined by the major river catchment boundaries.

AWRC Drainage Divisions:

In Victoria, the numbering for surface water gauging sites uses the National Gauging Station Number system. Under this system, each gauging site is assigned a unique six digit number. The first of the six numbers represents the drainage division, the next two the river basin and the last three the site. All gauging sites in northern Victoria (above the Great Dividing Range) start with a 4 (representing the Murray Darling Basin Division). All sites south of the Great Dividing Range start with a 2 (representing the South East Coast drainage division). All gauging site numbers are unique (ie. only occur once).

For example: Site 403200 (Ovens River @ Wangaratta):

4 – Drainage division 4 (Murray Darling Drainage Division),

03 – River basin 03 (Ovens Basin),

200 – site number 200

The table below shows the drainage divisions and river basins for Victoria:

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Murray Darling Basin Drainage Division

South East Coast Drainage Division