What We Did
to the River
“The Cooks River once ran clear enough to swim in. Within a century of colonisation it was an open drain. This hunt traces exactly how that happened — and who decided it was acceptable.”
- ✓ Printable field notes & clue map
- ✓ Digital story briefing
- ✓ 8 location-based clues
- ✓ Historical reveal document
- ✓ Instant access, no app needed
Instant access · Valid any time · No expiry
Before the British arrived, the Cooks River was a freshwater estuary lined with mangroves, feeding grounds for the Gadigal and Wangal people for tens of thousands of years. The water ran clear. The banks were dense with native vegetation. Fish were abundant.
Within fifty years of colonisation, the lime kilns were burning. Within a hundred, the river had been dammed, straightened, and was carrying industrial waste from the brickworks, tanneries, and abattoirs that lined its banks. By the 1930s it was effectively dead.
Your investigation begins at the riverbank near Tempe Reserve. The water looks calm now. It hasn't always been.
What You'll Uncover
- ► The pre-colonial ecology of the Cooks River and what the Gadigal and Wangal people knew about managing it
- ► The colonial lime kilns at Tempe — what they burned, what they produced, and what they left in the soil and water
- ► The damming and channelling of the river in the early 20th century — a flood control project that destroyed the last surviving wetlands
- ► Decades of industrial waste from the brickworks, abattoirs, and chemical plants that used the river as an open drain
- ► The slow, incomplete rehabilitation of the river from the 1990s onward — and what still hasn't recovered
The Experience
You'll walk the riverbank from Tempe Reserve toward the old industrial precinct, following clues tied to the physical landscape itself — the shape of the riverbank, the vegetation, remnant structures, and the concrete channelling that replaced a living floodplain.
The final clue brings you to the site of the original lime kilns. There's almost nothing left above ground. The reveal explains what's still there underneath — and why it still matters.
Tempe
Tempe sits along the Cooks River in Sydney's inner south, on land the Gadigal and Wangal people managed for thousands of years. Its post-colonial history is written in the river — a story of rapid industrialisation and slow ecological collapse.
Environmental Colonial History Riverside