While recently exploring the coastline east of Nowra, we took a wrong turn and rather than ending up at the glistening sands of one of the Shoalhaven coast’s many beautiful beaches, we found ourselves at a dead-end. Well, sort of.
Turns out my navigator failed to scrutinise the map sufficiently to notice that Comerong Island Road is permanently punctuated by a short section of … water. And last time I checked, the yowie mobile didn’t come with a James Bond-esque submersible feature as standard, so, instead Mrs Yowie and I decided to wait for the car ferry to continue our journey across the Shoalhaven River.
An aerial view of the canal (centre left) connecting the Shoalhaven River (top) with the Crookhaven River (bottom).Credit: Maree Clout
With no one else in the queue (or within cooee for that matter), while waiting we took a peek around the river bank.
Amongst a proliferation of warnings not to get too close to the mechanics of the ferry is a sign emblazoned with the words: “You are at Australia’s first navigable canal – Berry’s Canal”. Wow! How come we’d never heard of it before?
During the long wait for the ferryman (turns out he was on his meal break) I convinced Mrs Yowie to turn the map up the right way, and bingo, we promptly found a less aquatic route to our destination.
The ferry which takes you from the near Nowra across the canal to Comerong Island.Credit: Shoalhaven Tourism
More about that trip in a future column, but intrigued about the canal’s origins, once back home, I did some digging. It turns out the sign was spot on.
The canal is named after Alexander Berry (yes, after whom the nearby town was named) who in 1822 was given a land grant of 10,000 acres and 100 convicts to establish the first European settlement on the south coast of NSW.
However, in mid-1822, after an unsuccessful attempt to land a dingy from his 15-ton cutter The Blanche at Shoalhaven Heads, in which two men drowned, he ordered his men to cut a canal from the Shoalhaven River through a sand spit into the nearby Crookhaven River. This provided easier and safer seafaring from the Shoalhaven River to the ocean than trying to navigate through the treacherous Shoalhaven Heads.
Don’t plan to catch the ferry across Berry’s Canal at meal times.Credit: Tim the Yowie Man
Having this access was critical to the prosperity of the area because in the early 1820s, the sea route was the only means of transport for goods and people to and from Sydney.
The canal, dug out using spades and pick axes, took Berry’s men 12 days to complete and was initially just 200 metres long and 5.5 metres wide.
Not only did the canal change the flow of the river, it also separated a land mass, thereby creating Comerong Island, and with it a long-standing dispute between Berry and the government as to who actually owned the island.
Berry asserted that the land was part of his original land grant, but the government surveyor refused to allow Berry the land on a technicality, arguing since it was an island, it belonged to the Crown.
The recently published “Snapshots of a Village - An Illustrated History of Shoalhaven Heads once Jerry Bailey” explains“that the loss of this land was a sore point with Alexander Berry right up until the time of his death,”reporting“he considered that he had done the Government a service by making a useable entrance to the River, but he had been ‘rewarded’ by the confiscation of the land that he considered he was entitled to.”
Christine Talbot, who edited the coffee table-style book, reports one local even claimed that Berry “had put a chain across the canal to prevent others from entering the river, a fact that Berry refuted”. Well, under the circumstances, you wouldn’t blame him, would you?
For many years after its construction, the canal looked man-made, but in the past 197 years the river has cut out a wider (about 300 metres) deeper passage to the point where the canal has now become the permanent outlet for the Shoalhaven River to the ocean via the Crookhaven River.
In fact, largely because of this canal, the original entrance to the Shoalhaven River, Shoalhaven Heads, now only opens during a major flood event.
While further researching the canal I discovered that fabled explorer Hamilton Hume assisted Berry in overseeing the construction of the canal. Of course, just two years later, in 1824 along with William Hovell, Hume ‘discovered’ an overland route between Sydney and Melbourne which later formed the basis of another important transport route, one much longer and much better known than Berry’s Canal — the Hume Highway.
And to think if we hadn’t got lost, I’d still be oblivious to this curious chapter of our colonial past.
Sometimes it’s worth taking a wrong turn after all.
Fact File:
Berry’s Canal: Best viewed at the ferry crossing at the end of Comerong Island Road, which is a 2.5- to 3-hour drive from Canberra via either Braidwood Road or the Federal Highway and Hume Highway (M31).
Comerong Island: While a there is a small number of farms on the island, the majority of the island is part of a nature reserve protecting littoral rainforest, tall coastal eucalypt salt marsh, mangroves and she-oak forest. The lagoons, bays and inter-tidal areas within the reserve provide habitat for migratory shore birds and other threatened species.
Did You Know: Christine Talbot who edited Snapshots of a Village - An Illustrated History of Shoalhaven Heads once Jerry Bailey, reports that “Survey plans of 1805 and 1822 show that the natural mouth of the Shoalhaven River was at Shoalhaven Heads, however the narrow and shallow entrance was treacherous for ocean-going vessels to navigate. George Bass had coined the term ‘Shoals Haven’ in 1797 to describe the sand bars and shallow water at the river mouth.”
A canal or an aqueduct?
To the uninitiated they are one and the same, however, there is a difference. A commonly accepted definition is that a canal is an artificial waterway, often connecting one body of water with another while an aqueduct is an artificial channel that is constructed to convey water from one location to another.
While Canberra’s best-known canal is the miniature one at Cockington Green (based on waterways in Norfolk, England) you have to venture beyond our border to see other canals (and aqueducts).
Canberra’s best-known canal is this miniature one at Cockington Green Gardens.Credit: Tim the Yowie Man
1. Hidden under part of the old Federal Highway at the Collector end of Lake George is a curious convict-built canal constructed in the mid-1830s. The 50-metre-long canal was the brainchild of early landholder Terence Aubrey Murray, who had a chain gang of convicts build this folly to channel fresh water from Lake George into the stagnant swamp on his property north of the lake, now known as Murrays Lagoon.
Tim checks-out the 180 year old convict canal which runsbeneath the Federal Highway at Lake George.Credit: Emma Minion
Unfortunately for Murray and his merry gang of labourers, the canal proved to be a futile exercise because of the failure to recognise that the lagoon level was in fact marginally higher than the lake’s, not lower. According to one version of the story, when the canal was completed, water from the swamp flowed into the lake instead of in the reverse direction. The canal is predominantly on private land but can be viewed from the highway 6.1km south of the southern Collector Exit.
2. As part of the Snowy Hydro Scheme, there are over 180km of aqueducts criss-crossing the Snowy Mountains. One of more accessible, the Pipers Creek Aqueduct, feeds water to the Guthega Dam/power station. It is located just west of Pipers Creek Bridge over Kosciuszko Road near Smiggins Holes.
3. According to John Colville for the Australian Canal Society (yes, really!), there are a number of aqueducts as part of Sydney’s Upper Nepean Scheme which at the end of the 19th Century. “This includes a 64 km aqueduct which runs down to Prospect Reservoir in the western suburbs of Sydney,” reports Colville, adding “you cross over it on the highway just near Mt Annan Botanic Gardens.
4. If you head west, The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area boasts over 3 500km of supply channels (aqueducts) of which around 250 km are cement lined, 100 km are piped and the remainder are earthen channels.
Mailbag
Summer mists can make driving to the coast a challenge.Credit: Stephanie Haygarth
It appears that I’m not the only one to be enamoured by the summer mists (actually low cloud) which often blow in over south coast escarpments, providing welcome respite on scorching hot days (Seeking the elusive Highlands Mist, February 2).
“Thanks for stirring the memories,” writes Colin Webb of Lyneham who“was raised on a dairy farm near Robertson in the NSW Southern Highlands” and remembers “getting the cows for milking of a late afternoon, and sending the dog out into the fog to find them and bring them back into view”.
“Driving up Macquarie Pass and seeing the escarpment top - and then the trees right next to you - disappear into the dripping white cloud, is also a deeply held memory”, reminisces Webb, whose“Nanna, a towny old woman from Yorkshire, used to say she could tell when they had reached the first dairy farm at the top of the pass, by the smell of the cow poo, no matter how thick the fog.”
Meanwhile, the exposé on the summer mist brought back much more recent memories for Alice Scott of Wamboin of a different coastal meteorological phenomena – sea mist.
“Just this summer on an especially hot day at our coast house in Congo, I was standing on the balcony and saw the beginning of a sea mist rolling in,” reports Alice. “It was amazing to watch and so beautiful.”
But the mist did have its drawbacks for Scott. “Of course the temperature took a bit of a plunge and I missed my swim,” she exclaims.
Worn hat
Mark Wilson of Lyneham has taken exception to the oft-published description of your columnist as ‘akubra-clad’.
“Wearing an akubra might make one ‘akubra-topped’ (or something similar) but wearing such a hat does not make one ‘akubra-clad’,” asserts Wilson.
“This has been bugging me for some time,” adds Wilson, suggesting “the future of a whole generation of young Canberrans is at risk here.”
Oh dear, do I ditch the description?
Contact Tim: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.comor Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick.
Where in Canberra?
Do you know the location of this giant pencil?Credit: Tim the Yowie Man
Cryptic Clue: Perhaps this pencil should be black.
Degree of difficulty: Medium.
Last week:
A door to the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility at the ANU.Credit: Tim the Yowie Man
Congratulations to first-time entrant Martin Conway of Bungendore for being the first reader to correctly identify last week’s photo as one of the doors to the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility at the ANU.
If you ever wondered what happens inside the accelerator, check-out this interactive online tour. https://physics.anu.edu.au/tour/nuclear/
Oops: The steam train mural at Red Hill that recently featured in this photo quiz is located near the walking track that leads up the hill from the intersection of Flinders Way and Mugga Way, not Mugga Lane as incorrectly advised in last week’s column.
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday 23 February, 2019 will win a double pass to Dendy - The Home of Quality Cinema.