Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Sydney Basin Bioregion

The Sydney Basin Bioregion lies on the central east coast of NSW and covers an area of approximately 3,624,008 hectares (IBRA 5.1). It occupies about 4.53 per cent of NSW and is one of two bioregions contained wholly within the state. The bioregion extends from just north of Batemans Bay to Nelson Bay on the central coast, and almost as far west as Mudgee.

The bioregion is bordered to the north by the North Coast and Brigalow Belt South bioregions, to the south by the South East Corner Bioregion and to the west by the South Eastern Highlands and South Western Slopes bioregions.

As well as Sydney itself, the Sydney Basin Bioregion encompasses the towns of Wollongong, Nowra, Newcastle, Cessnock, Muswellbrook and Blue Mountains towns such as Katoomba and Mt Victoria.

It includes a significant proportion of the catchments of the Hawkesbury-Nepean, Hunter and Shoalhaven river systems, all of the smaller catchments of Lake Macquarie, Lake Illawarra, Hacking, Georges and Parramatta Rivers, and smaller portions of the headwaters of the Clyde and Macquarie rivers.

Sources & Further reading

Mary E White, Running Down, Water in a Changing Land, Kangaroo Press, 2000