Burns Creek (Sydney)

Burns Creek drains a catchment area of 13.5 square kilometres (5.2 sq mi) into Prospect Creek. Its catchment area includes portions of the local government areas of Canterbury-Bankstown, Fairfield and Cumberland local government areas. The largest area of catchment is residential land use (approximately 50%), followed by industrial land use, where open space only accounts for about 15% of the catchment. Flooding in the creek has generally concurred with the flooding within the extensive Prospect Creek catchment.^[1]

The boundaries of nearby residential and commercial zones are usually situated at the top of the bank, or are at least located up to 10 metres (33 ft). A grassy high flowing bypass floodway was established across the curve where the creek meets the concrete-walled Stimsons Creek. Road bridges are found at Normanby Street and Mandarin Street, both being span bridges, a further road bridge at The Horsley Drive, which features two rows of piers, and a footbridge at Campbell Street (that leads to Victory Street).^[2]

Upstream of Woodville Road, the waterway becomes a concrete-walled rectangular channel, which partitions into multiple tributaries. Stimson Creek and Barrass Drain are Burns Creek's two sub-catchments.^[3] The creek's riparian strip features recreational areas such as Blackford Park, Cockburn Crescent Reserve, Landon Street Reserve and Hanson Reserve.^[2] During early European colonisation, Burns Creek and many other creeks in the Fairfield area were a series of freshwater ponds or gullies, rather than continuously streaming waterbodies.^[4]

Burns Creek is a brook that is 4.6 km (2.9 mi) in length, with 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) of it being presented as a concrete-lined perennial waterway within a vegetated environment downstream (north) of Tangerine Street. The rest of the creek is intermittent, flowing as a subterranean waterway in some areas and forming a gully in others. It is known as Villawood Drain particularly upstream (south of Woodville Road).^[3]

It normally flows from south-east to north-west and it can be regarded as Prospect Creek's eastern fork. Near Tangerine Street, the creek's banks become moderately bushy, and it is more densely vegetated around its confluence with Stimsons Creek and also downstream of The Horsley Drive, with tree species generally being those found in the Coastal Swamp Oak Forest and River-flat eucalypt forest biomes, such as Casuarina glauca.^[3]

The concrete-lined, earthen, north–south orientated, channel Stimsons Creek joins Burns Creek upstream of The Horsley Drive, just south of Fairfield Street and the Cumberland Line, and is just around 450 metres (1,480 ft) in length. Stimsons Creek becomes subterranean just below Tangerine Street (as it heads south-east).^[2]

The creek has a catchment of 2.85 kilometres (1.77 mi) and a length of 3.8 kilometres (2.4 mi), most of it being subterranean, where it fluctuates from pipeline releasing into an open waterway to a brief concrete lined section, and a meandering vegetated division.^[3]