Lake Cawndilla is a remarkable outback wetland located within Kinchega National Park in far western New South Wales, roughly 110 kilometres southeast of Broken Hill. Part of the iconic Menindee Lakes system, it sits on the Darling (Barka) River approximately 200 kilometres upstream of its junction with the Murray River at Wentworth. The lake is one of four main lakes in the Menindee system — alongside Lakes Wetherell, Pamamaroo, and Menindee — which together hold a combined capacity of 1,731,000 megalitres, roughly three and a half times the capacity of Sydney Harbour. Lake Cawndilla occupies the southern end of this interconnected system and plays a unique role as a source of environmental flows released into the Great Darling Anabranch. The landscape is quintessential outback Australia: vast, flat, and subject to dramatic cycles of flood and dry that define the ecology and productivity of the fishery.