What is meant by a catchment?

Time to be reminded of the importance of the place where we live. It’s one thing to live within a house or apartment. It’s another to acknowledge where the building is located – in a catchment.  Fergus Hancock explains.

ALL OF us live in a catchment. A catchment contains all the streams that flow into rivers that flow to an estuary that flows into the ocean. All of us live near streams that flow downstream into rivers and from there to the ocean.

The concrete drain near your house was once a vegetated stream. It flows down into a larger stream and into a river. You may live next to an open stream with natural vegetation, or non-native vegetation such as grass. All of them take water down to a river.

From the highest hilltops to Lake Macquarie and the Pacific Ocean, drains are streams and streams become rivers. Just like the blood vessels in our bodies, each stream is connected to every other stream in its catchment.

All of our watercourses take whatever rubbish or toxic stuff people dump into them. Everyone suffers when streams are not protected, as everyone pays a price when water is polluted or filled with rubbish.

All of our watercourses need roughness, rocks, gravel, sand and vegetation, to work properly. Without those things, watercourses erode and cause damage to footpaths, buildings and roads.

We owe respect to our watercourses, for they host life and they support our lives. Every glass of water, every apple, every ear of wheat, every boll of cotton, every Kilowatt hour of electricity, every solar panel, everything we have is there because a river supplied us water to create them.

Every frog, every tortoise, every yabby, every fish, every prawn lives because a river supplied fresh water and nutrients and vegetation.

We owe our lives to our rivers. Our rivers exist because they are fed by streams. All of it is connected. All of it supports life. And therefore, it is incumbent on us to respect and care for creeks and rivers as if our lives depended on them – because they do.

Words by Fergus Hancock, President, MHCS.  February 2025

* camping in a catchment, albeit on a rather permanent basis, is a word picture that Costa Georgiados, author of Costa’s World and host of Gardening Australia, ABC tv