The Nepean’s flow

 


At Yarramundi,

You can dip your weary feet

In the Nepean’s healing flow –

Here, its chapter ends

With the Grose, the Hawkesbury starts

Sluggish, steady, slow

 

This far end

The Nepean has nothing to lose

It will gladly wash a part of you

And take those broken dreams

Scattering them

Somewhere in the Pacific blue

 

But do not sigh for the part you lose -

If it is a shard of hope

Let it sail and float afar;

It will come back:

A rainbow, drizzle, summer’s cloud

Or maybe even a silver star

 

And if you lose a piece of grief

Be grateful to the Nepean’s flow

Write a poem, perhaps a song

Throw it in the summer’s stream

Watch the ink dissolve and die -

And writer, written will un-belong

 

Do not sigh for the part you lose -

Let it flow, let it go -

This much, the river lets you grow

Here, at Yarramundi,

Where you can dip your weary feet

And be a part of the Nepean’s flow….

 

10^th Jan’ 26

 

Yarramundi sits at a quiet but powerful confluence where the wild, sandstone-cut Grose River slips out of the Blue Mountains to meet the broader Nepean River. It is from this confluence that the Hawkesbury creating a protective arc to the north of Sydney before meeting the Pacific.

Framed by open grasslands, river oaks and distant escarpments, Yarramundi feels both pastoral and elemental—a threshold between wilderness and floodplain. Long used by Aboriginal people and later by early European settlers, Yarramundi remains a place of pause and perspective, where the geography of Greater Sydney quietly reorganises itself around water, time and land.

Once known as Kearns Retreat, Yarramundi is named after a respected Elder and leader of the Dharug people, who lived in the Hawkesbury–Nepean region around the time of early European contact in the late 18th century. He is remembered as a peacemaker and intermediary, working to protect his people and maintain relations with the British settlements. The name honours both the man and the deep Aboriginal history of this place, acknowledging the long-standing custodianship of the natives here, around the confluence of the three scared rivers of the primeval Dharug land.

It was on a hot 40-degree summer’s day that I happened to pass the Yarramundi reserve around this confluence. The inspiration for these lines came when I was sitting with my feet dipped in the shallow waters of the Nepean. I couldn’t help admire the sparkling reflections of the sun on the blue waters, beautifully gift-wrapped with native gum trees as the cool waters balanced the rising mercury on that summer’s day.