Upper Nepean River: Cultural and Environmental Insights
Built Heritage · Camden · Camden Story · Cobbitty · Cultural Heritage · Engineering Heritage · Engineering History · Hawkesbury-Nepean river · Heritage · History · Living History · Local History · Local Studies · Nepean River · Oakdale · Picton · Place making · Placemaking · Sense of place · Stories · Storytelling · Upper Nepean Water Supply Scheme

Upper Nepean River: Cultural and Environmental Insights

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What is the Nepean River

What is the Nepean River?

The Nepean River is the upper catchment of the larger Hawkesbury-Nepean River system, which extends from Robertson in the east, south to Goulburn, west into the Blue Mountains and north to Broken Bay.

The Nepean River is the section of the catchment upstream of the junction with the Grose River at Yarramundi.

An overview of the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment. This map is handy as it shows the physical extent of the river basin, from its easterly limit at the top of the Illawarra Escarpment above Bulli, south to Lake George, west to Lithgow, and north to Kandos. The valley is one of the longest coastal river basins in Australia, extending over 470 kms from Goulburn to the Hunter Valley in the north, with an area of 21,400 sq km. (SES, 2012)

Captain Watkin Tench named the Nepean River on June 27th, 1789, during an expedition west from Rose Hill (Parramatta), noting its broad expanse and depth, and naming it after Evan Nepean, the Home Office Under-Secretary who organised the First Fleet.

Governor Arthur Phillip named the Hawkesbury River in 1789, specifically during an expedition in June of that year, honouring Charles Jenkinson, the Baron Hawkesbury, who was a British statesman and President of the Board of Trade. Phillip explored the river’s mouth earlier in March 1788 but formally named it on his second, more extensive voyage in June 1789. 

Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, catchment and surrounding regions (map by Paul Irish). This is a helpful map because it shows all the tributaries of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River Basin. The map was drawn from the Dyarubbin: Mapping Aboriginal history, culture and stories of the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales project. (Karskins 2020)

Upper Nepean River

Discussion in this project will be restricted to the Nepean River upstream of the Bents Basin sandstone gorge. For convenience, I will call this catchment area the Upper Nepean River.

Map of Hawkesbury-Nepean River catchment showing distribution of geomorphic reach types, and locations of sites sampled for freshwater mussels and substrate characteristics during 2005/2006. (Brainwood 2008) This map is helpful as it shows the location of the Bents Basin sandstone gorge on the Nepean River.

Complex history

The Upper Nepean River, which will be discussed on this blog, has a complex history with many interconnecting stories and layers that few people really understand, and there is little or no overview or integration.

The river is the dominant geographic feature of the settlements along the Upper Nepean and has shaped the response of communities, Indigenous and European, to their location.

Floods and droughts have been the driving factors shaping daily lives, events, and culture since people occupied the river basin.

The main European settlements are Camden, Narellan, Cobbitty, Menangle, Mount Hunter, The Oaks, Oakdale, Picton, Wilton, Douglas Park, Thirlmere and Bargo.

The most important engineering works in the Upper Nepean River catchment was the Upper Nepean Water Supply Scheme of the late 19th and early 20th century.

This is a map of the Upper Nepean Water Supply Scheme located at Cataract Dam. The image was taken in 2021 by Robert Whitby. The map is probably from the 1950s because it shows the roads into the Burragorang Valley, which were flooded when Warragamba Dam was completed in 1960.

Reflection

The Upper Nepean River is the most important natural feature of this geographic area, and human activity has had significant cultural impacts on it.

Indigenous peoples and Europeans have both had to respond to the area’s landform, dominated by the river and its behaviour.

The cultural landscape has been shaped by these factors for Indigenous people and Europeans.

The river has shaped the construction of a sense of place and community identity.

Water Canal running through the Australian Botanic Garden. The Upper Canal, a heritage-listed engineering marvel, runs through the Australian Botanic Garden, supplying much of its irrigation water by gravity feed from the Upper Nepean Dams to Prospect Reservoir. This 19th-century system uses tunnels, aqueducts, and open channels, including a tunnel under the garden, to deliver bulk water for Sydney, making it both a crucial utility and a historic landscape feature.  (1900 SydneyWater)

Resources

Karskins, Grace 2020, Dyarubbin: Mapping Aboriginal history, culture and stories of the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. Dept of Customer Services, NSW Government, Sydney. Online at https://portal.spatial.nsw.gov.au/portal/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=82ae77e1d24140e48a1bc06f70f74269# (Viewed 28 December 2025)

Brainwood, Meredith & Burgin, Shelley & Byrne, Maria. (2008). The role of geomorphology in substratum patch selection by freshwater mussels in the Hawkesbury-Nepan River (New South Wales), Australia. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. 18. 1285 – 1301. 10.1002/aqc.949.

Early morning reflections in the Nepean River pondage above the Camden Weir (I Willis 2025)

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