Our water quality monitoring program has shown Narrawallee Inlet to have excellent water quality. Find out more about the estuary and its unique features.
Narrawallee Inlet is located on the south coast of New South Wales. It is classed as a barrier river with an intermittently closed entrance.
The estuary and adjacent national park offer great scenery as well as myriad opportunities for birdwatching, fishing, kayaking, swimming and bushwalking.
Water quality report card
As part of our water quality monitoring program we assess the water quality and ecosystem health of an estuary using a range of relevant indicators. We sample a subset of the estuaries between Wollongong and the Victorian border every 3 years. The most recent sampling in Narrawallee Inlet was completed over the 2017–18 summer, when 2 sites were sampled on a monthly basis.
This report card represents 2 water quality indicators that we routinely measure: the amount of algae present and water clarity. Low levels of these 2 indicators equate with good water quality.
A
Algae
A
Water clarity
A
Overall grade
The report card shows the condition of the estuary was excellent with:
algae abundance graded excellent (A)
water clarity graded excellent (A)
overall estuary health graded excellent (A).
Grades for algae, water clarity and overall are represented as:
A – excellent
B – good
C – fair
D – poor
E – very poor.
Go to estuary report cards to find out what each grade means, read our sampling, data analysis and reporting protocols, and find out how we calculate these grades.
Physical characteristics
Estuary type
Barrier river
Latitude (ºS)
–35.3
Longitude (ºE)
150.47
Catchment area (km2)
80.9
Estuary area (km2)
1
Estuary volume (ML)
636.4
Average depth (m)
0.7
Tidal exchange volume
Tidal exchange volume or tidal prism data is available for this estuary. This tidal prism was measured in 1993.
Tide state
Flow (ML)
Local tidal range (m)
Sydney Harbour tidal range (m)
Ebb flow
320
0.94
1.1
Flood flow
380
0.93
1.1
Notes: km2 = square kilometres; m = metres; m3 = cubic metres; ML = megalitres.
The catchment of Narrawallee Inlet is moderately disturbed, with about 40% of land cleared for grazing. Over half of the catchment is forested, some of which lies in Morton National Park.
The Budawang Coast Nature Map(link is external) is an online data platform the community can use to record and identify biodiversity. Data collected is used to map the distribution of native plant and animal species from Moruya up almost to Kiama.