The Abercrombie River is a river in New South Wales, Australia, flowing from Mount Werong westward to the Wyangala Dam near Cowra.[1] The river is a tributary of the Lachlan, which it joins at Wyangala lake.
The 130 km (81 mi) river flows through freehold land as well as the Abercrombie River National Park, and provides habitat for platypus and rakali.[2] The Goulburn-Oberon Road crosses the Abercrombie River in the steep-sided Abercrombie Gorge.
The original inhabitants of the land alongside the river were Aborigines of the Wiradjuri or Gundungara clans, which may have used the river as a trading route.[3] The first European to discover the watercourse was explorer Charles Throsby on 5 May 1819, during an expedition from Sydney to the Central West of New South Wales.[1] Alluvial gold was discovered in and along the river in 1851, inspiring a minor gold rush hampered by the ruggedness of the terrain and the periodic depths of the waterway.[4] Early miners recovered up to 3 oz (85 g) of gold a day along the river,[5] and by 1862 between forty and fifty mining parties were at work at Milburne Creek, a minor tributary of the Abercrombie.[6] It is the furthest east of the inland flowing rivers.