Once the river would have been around 50-60 metres wide in the Moorebank / Chipping Norton area. It would have meandered around a low lying floodplain, surrounded by brackish and freshwater swamps and dense river-flat forests. It was the traditional homelands of the Cobragul clan – one of their dietary staples was the Cobra grub commonly found in the intertidal reaches of creeks like Cabramatta and Prospect Creeks around their confluence with the Georges RIver near Chipping Norton.
After the world wars in the 1900's, the area became intensively farmed and broken up into soldier settlement blocks to become an area of orchards and market gardens on the rich alluvial soils deposited by the river over millions of years. In the late 1950-60's, soil and sand extraction began in an uncontrolled fashion. By the 1970's, the whole landscape was pockmarked with sand mining lagoons and huge holes. When flood swept through massive areas of banks between the holes, they were prone to collapse. During this time, a campaign against the environmental damage was led for decades by Cr Dom Syme of Liverpool City Council. The Chipping Norton Lakes Authority was established to collect royalties from sand mining companies and plan and rehabilitate the area into parkland and lakes system. Today water quality is plagued by urban storm-water runoff and the Lake is reported as safe for swimming less than 50% of the time. Rather than a shallow narrow meandering river, we have a lake of 250-300 metres in width. Sharyn Cullis location: Chipping Norton Lake Photo captions: Once, all the river flats around Chipping Norton would have been covered in forests like this one. The river banks would also have been protected by reeds and mangroves. (Georges River Environmental Education Centre) Georges River at Chipping Norton 1951 before sand mining. (Georges River Environmental Education Centre) Georges River at Chipping Norton being mined, 1970's. (Georges River Environmental Education Centre)
Living Streams 