Australian Geographic

Nature’s realm

The winter sun lights up an imposing, rust-stained gorge wall towering above us.

Behind us vegetation spills from shady pockets of remnant rainforest into the water. I dip a paddle and watch the whirlpools spin away from it, as the double canoe I’m sharing with my husband glides atop the water’s surface.

It’s a late morning in June and the water body we’re exploring is Lake Yarrunga, at Kangaroo Valley in the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales. This human-made lake was formed where the Kangaroo and Shoalhaven rivers merge, when Tallowa Dam was completed in 1976 as part of the water supply and hydroelectric power generation Shoalhaven Scheme. Beyond its banks are

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