Todd River is a river in the Northern Territory, Australia. The riverbed is usually dry. It contains water only after heavy rainfall, which is extremely rare. A regatta known as Henley-on-Todd is held in September of each year. In this race, competitors carry bottomless boats up the dry bed of the river near Alice Springs in a parody of an ordinary boat race. The river’s source region is in the MacDonnell Ranges, north of Alice Springs. It flows east, then southeast, for about 200 miles (320 kilometers) and disappears in the sands of the Simpson Desert, near the South Australian border. Just south of Alice Springs, it flows through the Heavitree Gap, which is also a route for the road, railway, and telegraph line.
The overland telegraph survey parties came upon the river in 1870 and named it after Charles Todd, a postmaster general and director of telegraphs for South Australia. Todd was mainly responsible for the construction of the Overland Telegraph.
