http://www.geocities.com/toby_meares2/012.htm Extract; The lakes of New South Wales are neither numerous nor important. A great number of so-called lakes are merely salt-water estuaries formed by the inroads of the sea on softer portions of the, coast. To this class belong Lake Illawarra, Lake Macquarie, Lake Tuggerah, and several others. Some of the coast lakes are merely intercepted river outlets, banked up by sand bars. The fresh-water lakes are for the most part simply depressed surfaces, where the storm-water collects into lagoons. The Western plains are so level, and are so little drained by continuous creeks, that after heavy rains small shallow lakes of this kind abound. The squatters call them clay-pans, and plough channels into them, to collect as much water as possible, but they dry up under the heat of the summer sun. Some of the larger natural hollows are more permanent. Of these the most important is Lake George, which has, however, been dry within the last half century, and cattle have grazed over its bed. The lak! e area is singularly small in a country containing 311,078 square miles, or 199,090,217 acres -a tract of country more than half as large again as France, or five times the area of England and Wales. MargaretB Lake Macquarie NSW Australia