With over a dozen waterways running east from the escarpment in the Illawarra, each with its own unique history, there's a myriad stories to tell about them.

Tens of thousands of years of First Nations Peoples' care for Country have made their mark, and 200 years of European settlement have wreaked massive changes. In longer timeframes, the Illawarra's relatively short east-flowing creeks have been created out of geological processes that formed the dramatic Illawarra escarpment about 30 million years ago. And before that, there were even older processes and movements, such as the massive forests of the carboniferous period that laid down the Illawarra coal measures, some of which can be seen in the picture below.  

And before that, and before that, and before that… As a result, I must admit I have struggled to work out where to start this series, in terms of the actual on-ground waterways. It feels like I've been clearing my throat for weeks!

So I'm starting super local: local to me, that is. Cabbage Tree Creek has branches immediately to the north and the south of where I live. They do have stories to tell, but it's incredibly hard to understand what they're saying!

Archives and old maps give a bit of info. Official reports, plans and other documents give a bit too. Personal memoirs and photos give a bit more, such as Frank Ryan's 1981 memoir, My Balgownie. And walking the creek gives all sorts of insights. They add up to a common picture: this one of the most disturbed, disrupted and damaged creeks in the Illawarra region. 

UOW Archives of WIN TV news, for example, show a creek treatment from 1968, where the 'inconvenient' location of Cabbage Tree Creek for a subdivision in Balgownie was 'overcome' by simply blasting the creek to change its alignment.

 This pattern of massive disturbance is what I see as I walk up and down Cabbage Tree Creek: a waterway that has had its course fundamentally shifted. A waterway that has been piped underneath roads and freeways, and made to turn right angles for the convenience of traffic. A waterway that has development to within 10 metres of its inner channel, meaning housing is being built on flood-prone alluvial flats.

Below is an example of an alluvial flat, around 5m from the main stream channel, but still an area that could go underwater in extreme rainfall conditions. 

And pictured below, an area of Cabbage Tree Creek that did go under in the big rains of 2022 and 2024. This is what we all need to be alert to, as we consider where to allow new housing, what plants to grow in our gardens, and as we face the impacts of climate change on rainfall amounts and intensity. 

Further east along the creek in Fairy Meadow is an area that used to be contain housing, but that flooded very badly in the major 1998 floods. Those blocks were bought back by Wollongong City Council, and now host an extension of Guest Park, including a pump bike track for kids and extensive plantings of indigenous vegetation. 

And beyond that, to the east, chunks of the creek are channelised with concrete, and inhospitable to most forms of life (though the Eastern Water Dragons like the heat of the concrete on a sunny day). It wends its way through the industrial parts of Fairy Meadow, behind the Innovation Campus and finally, combines with Fairy Creek and to flow into the ocean at Puckeys Estate.

And thankfully, at Puckeys and at many other points along its course, Cabbage Tree Creek is being cared for. Efforts by landholders and Council are seeing some parts of the creek being repaired and restored.

And this is the story of waterways throughout the region: care along some stretches but not others, and a legacy of decision-making that has not reflected the creeks' cultural or ecological significance. I hope that this series might help a little with the care side of things!