The Hunter River begins in the Mount Royal Range in the Barrington Tops and flows around 460km to its mouth at the port of Newcastle. The Hunter River catchment reaches further inland than any other NSW catchment, and is one of the largest coastal catchments in NSW covering an area over 21,000km.
The Hunter River is the most important estuary in NSW for shorebirds, and is internationally recognised as a home to a range of threatened and migratory species.