[8] It was named by Ludwig Leichhardt on 16 June 1845 after Sir Thomas Mitchell while he was on his overland expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington.

[1] The Mitchell River and its tributaries have for a long time carved their way westwards through the rugged, weathered highlands of the Great Dividing Range, carrying away sediments to be deposited in the broad floodplains and wetlands of the Gulf Savannah country.

[9] The rivers' waters "pulse" annually with monsoonal rains, seasonally collecting water from across the local tropical rainforests in the highlands to the east; the wet sclerophyll forests in the central uplands; a variety of woodlands plus savannah in the western plains; annually flooding with freshwater, the tidal plains, wetlands, estuaries, and mangroves of the lower Mitchell and coastal plains.

[9] The catchment ecology as a whole has been generally described as follows:[9] The vegetation in the Mitchell River Catchment area ranges from the World Heritage Wet Tropic rainforest on the eastern highlands to the open savannah on the western and lower Mitchell plains.

The permanent waters in the upper catchment are associated with springs and water holes... More specifically, while this ecologically diverse river system is relatively poorly studied, it is known to contain at least 18 rare, endangered or vulnerable animal species including the golden-shouldered parrot, the Gouldian finch and the northern bettong.