The Mighty Nepean River 1

Well a change of pace for me - from the "around the yard" shots now I am getting more mobile, thought we would give you all a bit of our local area.
Penrith NSW nestles on the Nepean River which runs parallel to the Blue Mountains foothills pretty much right down to the Hawkesbury Windsor area and then finds it way out to the ocean as the Hawkesbury River.

The pic today is looking back west over the river to our little home area (Leonay) where we built some 40 year ago. More on Leonay in another Blip.

Would have liked a bit more sun but there you have it, maybe the duller skies offer a better colouring with the few autumn trees showing through. Enjoy.

Some info from WIKI and a link which gives quite a bit of history info follows.

Nepean River (Aboriginal: Yandhai), is a major perennial river, located in the south-west and west of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The Nepean River and its associated mouth, the Hawkesbury River, virtually encircle the metropolitan region of Sydney.

The headwaters of the Nepean River rise near Robertson, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) south of Sydney and about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the Tasman Sea. The river flows north in an unpopulated water catchment area into Nepean Dam, which supplies potable water for Sydney. North of the dam, the river forms the western edge of Sydney, flowing past the town of Camden and the city of Penrith, south of which flowing through the Nepean Gorge. Near Wallacia it is joined by the dammed Warragamba River; and north of Penrith, near Yarramundi, at its confluThere are eleven weirs located on the Nepean River that significantly regulate its natural flow. The river has been segmented into a series of weir lakes rather than a freely flowing river and is also impacted by dams in the Upper Nepean catchment.

The Wallacia Weir was initially built as a wooden weir for the John Blaxland flour mill at Grove Farm. The first Australian fishsteps were built when the current concrete weir was built at the beginning of the Nepean Gorge, an anticendant entrenched meander caused by the slow uplift during the Blue Mountains orogeny carved down through the fifty-million-year-old Hawkesbury sandstone.

In the 1950s the building of the Warragamba Dam across the steep gorge of the Warragamba River, the Nepean's major tributary, intercepted the flow of the great bulk of its waters and diverted them to meet the needs of the growing Sydney metropolitan area, reducing the river to a shadow of its former self.

These dams and weirs have had a potent effect, blocking migratory native fish like Australian bass (also locally commonly known as perch) from much of their former habitat, and reducing floods and freshets needed for spawning. Nevertheless, the Hawkesbury/Nepean remains an important and popular wild bass fishery.

The luscious banks of the Nepean River provide a natural haven for local flora and fauna and a quiet location for local residents to relax. At Emu Plains, the western bank of the river provides a location for outdoor theatre productions on warm summer nights. The eastern bank at Penrith provides barbecue facilities and children's play equipment, as well as a wide pathway running for several kilometres for strolls along the riverbank. The eastern bank is also the home of the Nepean Rowing Club.
ence with the Grose River, the Nepean becomes the Hawkesbury River.
Nepean info