Clear Paddock Creek

Clear Paddock Creek is an urban watercourse that is a tributary of Orphan School Creek, which in turn, is a tributary of Prospect Creek. Located in the City of Fairfield, New South Wales, Australia, the creek starts from Bonnyrigg near North Liverpool Road and ends at Orphan School Creek to the east near King Road in Fairfield West. Situated in Western Sydney on the Cumberland Plain, the creek is concrete-walled east of Brisbane Road to the convergence with Orphan School Creek at northeast, though a naturalised section of the creek called "Restoring the Waters" begins just west of Brisbane Road at Edensor Park, and southwest of that point the creek remains natural with a reedy riparian zone. For public access, the transitway bus network crosses several sections near the creek. Stone artifacts belonging to the Darug people, who are indigenous to southwest Sydney, have been found on the creek's banks, and are thousands of years old. Today, the vegetal banks of the creek are an important place for storytelling and community arts. The creek was a source of freshwater, fish, eels and shellfish for the local Aboriginal Australians. Like most creeks in the Georges River catchment area, Clear Paddock Creek was a series of ponds and gullies rather than a continuous stream, before the banks were disturbed by the European settlers. Wild fennel and chicory growing through the creek's banks are remnants of the early European farmers in the St Johns Park area. Its name suggests that the creek meandered through a cleared paddock of an early farm in the area. In 1995, it was announced that the concrete-lined creek will be turned into the natural creek it once was, though only a small portion of it was reestablished as such – In 1996, the project rejuvenated the 500 metres (1, 600 ft) long section of the concrete storm water drain to a natural living stream featuring a riparian buffer. This site, which is just west of Brisbane Road Bridge in Bonnyrigg, became known as "Restoring the Waters" in 2001, and earned the council an international environmental award.

Flows through: Australia.

River data from Wikidata (CC0); lengths normalised to a common unit.