Down through recorded history, from the beginnings of one of the world’s oldest civilizations, to the present day nation of modern times, numbering over 100 million, the vast majority of Egypt’s population is confined to the delta and floodplain of the river Nile. The sandy wastes making up the rest of the country support only a small fraction of the total. The Nile has been something of a mystery over the thousands of years of human habitation for a number of reasons, but the key to most of these is tied up with a question of “Where does it begin? What is the source of the Nile?”
The answer to this, perhaps surprisingly, is only something that has been known for less than 170 years (from the time of writing).
Crucially, the river divides at Khartoum into two major source-rivers, the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The Blue Nile has its origins in the highlands of Ethiopia, where the heavy summer rains see a significant increase in that river’s contribution to the overall flow of the Nile, and are responsible for the annual flooding downriver in Egypt. This flooding (and the sediment coming with it) explains the ongoing abundance of agricultural production the country was fabled for down the centuries.
The White Nile is longer, and its flow more constant, though smaller in overall volume. It breaks into numerous smaller channels as it “disappears” into the vast wetlands of Southern Sudan, called the Sudd. To the south of this, as the watercourses emerge, the re-formed river is found to originate from the massive Lake Victoria, the second-largest lake in the world.
“So what?” you say.
Perhaps presumptuously, this cache celebrates the origins of a waterway with which most in the southwest and west of Sydney are acquainted … South Creek. Not quite the Nile, I know. But bear with me. A little imagination may be needed.
Historically, South Creek is the waterway at the heart of the landspace known as “The Cowpastures”, the area where those cattle which escaped from the fledgling colony at Sydney Cove in 1788 were eventually discovered. In the intervening years they had become several herds of healthy beasts … a finding which showed this area to be one that Sydney Town desperately needed. And, as the sign on the road into Camden testifies, so it proved, becoming the “Birthplace of the Nation’s Wealth”.
South Creek wends its tortuous way across the countryside, eventually entering the Hawkesbury just downriver from Windsor.
But where is its source? No one died making this discovery. We’re all safe.
But it’s here. Gregory Hills. (Rainfall that lands just over the rise behind this spot feeds Bunbury Curran Creek and these waters in turn feed the Georges River)
There is a minor problem, though. Some maps ... eg the map on the Geocaching app … suggest that the actual origin of the creek lies in the region of “The Unfurling” (celebrated in the Gregory Hills Public Art Adventure Lab), a zone where runoff collects and basically drains downhill through La Valla Park. However, the watercourse thus created does what is virtually a right-angle turn in joining another watercourse near the junction of Whistler and Yaldara Streets. To complicate matters though, in other places … eg the map on the Geocaching website(!) … the suggestion is that the course properly called South Creek is this other creek that is joined by The Unfurling’s watercourse. That creek has its origin in a large pond nestled in the angle between Gregory Hills Drive and the Sydney water channel. How to resolve this?
Perhaps they are both South Creek, and it’s a “White Nile/Blue Nile” thing. This second watercourse is our ‘White Nile’ … the pond, our ‘Lake Victoria’. (OK, maybe you need more than just “a little” imagination!) The other is our ‘Blue Nile’, starting up where the runoff gathers. And here is an extra bit of cache help for the heroes who took time to read all this. “It’s down … very low.” Often things are pretty dry, but when significant downfalls occur, a fair bit of water eventually emerges from this source to join the other one. There are a number of parallels then, between this waterway and its counterpart in the Northern Hemisphere. You may also note some large fish in this pond. Unlike the Nile though, no crocodiles have been sighted yet.
Maybe we could celebrate it by setting up some pyramids and a sphynx or two further down the creek.
The finding of this cache does require a bit of an expedition. The best way to reach it is to park at the suggested WP, walk across to the metal “snail” (also part of the “Gregory Hills Public Art” A.L.), continue past and enter the bush about 25 m further along. You will see a ‘trail’ of sorts (it used to be a service track) a couple of metres down the slope. This can be used to access the sloping outer wall of the retention basin, which is the way to GZ. The 'trail' is the starting point for this cache as well as the next in the series, GCB2PG1 ("The Sudd") . If traversing the sloped side of the retention basin is proving a bit awkward, firmer footing can be found on the rocks that make up the wall of the basin.
No swaps with this one, sorry.