As an island continent, with a land mass of about 7,692,030 km² Australia has a vast coastline, off shore islands included it’s about 59 736 kms
Most Australians, some 85%, live within 50 kilometres of the coast. I grew up by the sea, about 3 minutes away. From an early age I was aware of its beauty and moods but also the neglectful attitude that many Australians demonstrate towards it. I’ll write more about this in the future.
Sydney, like so many other coastal cities, has used the ocean to dispose of wastes since it became a city 150 years ago.(From: Sharon Beder “Sydney Sewage and the South Pacific)
Swimming amongst fatty sewage from the Bondi and Malabar outfalls, is still a vivid childhood memory. Now this problem has been ‘solved’ by discharging the sewage further out to sea. Unfortunately this is principally a case of out of sight out of mind. Sydney, to a large measure, still uses the ancient Roman approach to sewage management by dumping it into the South Pacific. We even have sewage overflow outlets that dump it into estuarine areas when it rains a lot.
Dumping stuff into the oceans has been a global issue for some time now. It’s not only Australian’s that do it. Despite this the South Pacific, or that part of it known as the Tasman Sea, is a constant source of interest for me.
Russell Darnley Blog 
It’s tragic that a resource like sewage is dumped into the sea. The driest continent on Earth, Australia just lets water go to waste. If the nutrients and water in sewage were recycled by large scale facilities inland, the water could be made totally clean.
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