The Rural Water Commission of Victoria and the Water Resources Commission of New South Wales in 1984 commissioned Gutteridge Haskins and Davey Pty. Ltd., Cameron McNamara Pty. Ltd., and Laurie Montgomerie & Pettit Pty. Ltd., to undertake a comprehensive investigation into floodplain management along the Murray River.

As part of the investigation, the Murray River Flood Plain Atlas has been produced.

Photomosaic base maps are used in the Atlas. The photomosaics, at a scale of 1 in 50,000 were supplied by the Department of Crown Lands and Survey (Victoria), Department of Lands (N.S.W.), and the National Mapping Authority. They were reduced to a scale of approximately 1 in 100,000 for the preparation of this Atlas.

The Atlas covers the length of the Murray River between Hume Dam and the South Australian border.

The flood information has been prepared from aerial photography and satellite imagery during flood events, the records of the Rural Water Commission, the Water Resources Commission and other statutory authorities, Local Government Authorities and from interviews with landholders. Cartographic information such as parish boundaries, roads, railways, rivers and creeks, towns and homesteads have been added to facilitate location of properties and features on the maps. All state highways, trunk roads and main roads are shown but only major shire roads and those in flooded areas are marked. Similarly only a selection of homesteads and the more important towns are named.

Flooding in the Murray River is complex and no two major floods act in quite the same manner. The extent of flooding shown represents an 'envelope' of major flooding over the period 1870 to 1980 inclusive. Therefore it is stressed that areas shown in the Atlas as flooded are not necessarily all flooded in every flood event. Attention is also drawn to the Notes on the following sheet.

Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure accuracy, however, in flat plains areas where water spreads widely, precise information on flood limits is usually not available. Also where steeply-rising country borders a floodplain and topographic information is limited, the flood limits as mapped should be regarded more as indicative than a firm definition, because of the scale of the maps.

It is hoped that this Atlas will be of benefit to both individuals and planners involved in the complex task of organising and supervising floodplain development.