Notes on River Distances
The length of the Murrumbidgee River between various towns is quite well known these days. However, it appears that some older sources can give misleading distances often up to 50% higher than the actual river distance. Steve Posselt at page 186 in Cry Me a River explains the folklore that river kilometres vs road kilometres is 3:1 and "everybody knows that". However, his experience on the Darling River is that the ratio is close to 2:1. The same applies to the Murrumbidgee River e.g. Wagga to Hay is 514-540 km by river (depending on the source) vs 267 km by road. See also Murray-Darling Journeys page xv.
The distances given by me for the Murrumbidgee River were measured off a 1:50,000 map using a map measuring tool. I estimate that for these distances the error is generally +/- 3% as compared to GPS recordings on some parts of the river.