Apart from the Murray River, the Burdekin River is economically the most important river in Australia, and has the fourth-largest watershed of any exorheic drainage system in Australia. It is also the fourth-largest river in Australia by volume of flow, but is so erratic that its discharge can reach the mean discharge of the Yangtze River (after two severe cyclones in 1958) or have as many as seven months with "no flow" whatsoever (as in 1923). This exceedingly erratic flow is due to the extreme variability of precipitation throughout the entire basin. Annual rainfall at most gauges within the basin can range from depending on the monsoon and the number of cyclones that cross the coast. On the coast itself, the variability is even higher: at Bowen not far from the river's mouth, the annual rainfall has ranged from in 1915 to over in 1950. It has the highest mean annual flow for any river adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef.