Boys Big Day Out

Where   : Brooklyn, Hawksbury River, New South Wales
When    : Tuesday, 30th October 2007, 10-30am
Weapon : Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3

Had a great day today - been out fishin'.

My pal Max has scored a boat - so we went off at 6-30am this morning up to the Hawksbury River, which flows in part through the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. From my place, this is just 15 minutes up the F3, and there we are, launching at Brooklyn and on the water shortly after 7-00pm. Magic.

Max is the driver and our Captain. Paul and I are the deckhands. Here's 2 of us ... not saying who is which, but they're a handsome couple.

I caught 3 catfish and Paul got a small bream, so not a big catch !  We were out there until 2-15pm, so a long day. We chucked the catfish back - jeez, they're an ugly, slimy looking fish, with a nasty looking barb on the neck.

This is a view from the back of Max's boat, looking up the Hawksbury River from the F3 Brooklyn Bridge. You wouldn't be dead for quids on a day like this.

The Hawksbury is NSW's largest estuary and is tidal for 145 km upstream. The complex river system is approximately 480km long and drains some 20,000square kilometres. It rises more than 100 kms south west of Sydney in the Southern Highlands, 100 kms to the west in the Blue Mountains and enters the Pacific Ocean some 100 kms to the North of Sydney.

The main source is in the Cullarin Range in the Southern Highlands, near Crookwell as the Wollondilly River. The Wollondilly passes Goulburn through deep gorges and canyons west of Berrima and Picton until it reaches the Burragorang Valley. Here, the river is joined by the Nattai River and the Cox River and becomes known as the Warragamba River.

Flowing north past Wallacia, the river becomes the Nepean River as it flows through Penrith and joins the Grose River which descends from the Northern Blue Mountains. Here it finally becames the Hawkesbury River.

The Hawkesbury River journeys towards the sea passing Windsor, Wiseman's Ferry, joining with the Colo and Macdonald rivers along the way until it reaches Brooklyn (where this picture was taken). Here, it degenerates into a tidal drowned valley, with many subsystems such as Mooney Mooney, Mullet, Patonga, Berowra and Cowan Creeks, before exiting into the Pacific Ocean at Broken Bay.