Lake Illawarra is a large coastal lagoon located in the city of Wollongong about 100 km south of Sydney, New South Wales.
The lake receives runoff from the Illawarra escarpment through Macquarie Rivulet and Mullet Creek, and has a narrow tidal entrance to the sea at Windang. It is shallow with an average depth of two to three metres. The reason is shallow is because of infilling by sand which has been eroded from the surrounding catchments.
Located in the Wollongong urban area, Lake Illawarra is popular for recreational fishing, prawning and sailing. It is vulnerable to pollution and urban run-off, and is used as a source of cooling water for Tallawarra Power Station on the western shore.
Birds found at the lake include pelicans, cormorants, musk ducks, Hoary-headed Grebes, black swans, black ducks, grey teal ducks, herons, ibises and spoonbills.
Matthew Flinders and George Bass called the lake Tom Thumb's Lagoon on Flinders' chart, named after their little boat the Tom Thumb, when they were there in March 1796. The book "Lake Illawarra: an ongoing history" by Joseph Davis was published by the Lake Illawarra Authority in 2005 and provides a wide-ranging environmental and historical 'biography' of the Lake and its foreshores. It also contains many images and photographs depicting the lake.
On 12 January 2009, it is suspected a man was bitten by a bull shark whilst snorkelling at Windang near the mouth of Lake Illawarra.
The Lake Illawarra Authority published two more books about the Lake in 2012. The first, "John Brown of Brownsville: his manuscripts, letterbook and the records of Dapto Show Society 1857-1904" edited by Joseph Davis, deals with the man who did most to protect the vegetation of the Lake Islands. The second of these books, titled "Gooseberry & Hooka: the island reserves of Lake Illawarra 1829-1947" edited by Joseph Davis; records by John Brown and others deals with the history of these two islands and how they have survived to become nature refuges rather than recreation reserves.
Famous quotes containing the word lake:
“What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)