Without in any way disparaging the vibrant capital city of the great state of Queensland, the Brisbane River ain't Sydney Harbour and never will be.

But after Sydney's 16-day deluge, Sydney Harbour and the city's other waterways are doing their best Brisbane River impersonation, with dramatic contrasts in some places where muddy floodwaters meet the blue ocean.

The image at the top of this story shows Barrenjoey Peninsula and headland at the northern end of Sydney's Palm Beach. This is where the outflow of the Hawkesbury River meets the ocean and the blue-brown contrast is unmistakeable.

This footage (below) of a very brown Sydney Harbour was taken by a passenger on the northern approach to Sydney airport, where you fly directly across the bays and inlets which lie west of the Harbour Bridge. The long peninsula below the plane for most of this video is the suburb of Hunters Hill.

This is Sydney Harbour this afternoon. Other passengers and I pretty taken aback. pic.twitter.com/gHt2sp6ay4

— Carly Waters (@_carlywaters) March 9, 2022

Obviously, Sydney Harbour is extremely muddy now because of all the rain, which totalled 617.4 mm in 16-day stretch from Feb 22 to March 9 inclusive.

But one unusual aspect of this Sydney rain event is that the rain was just as heavy in most western parts of the city.

• For example, Penrith in Sydney's far west had 572.6 mm compared to that 617.4 mm reading at Observatory Hill on the southern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge
• Bankstown, in Sydneys southwest, had a whopping 682.6 mm, or just over 10% more rain than the city.

Sydney can often have heavy rain along its coastal fringe and next-to-nothing in the western suburbs. That's why Penrith's average annual rainfall is approximately half that of the Sydney CBD. And it's why heavy rain in the city often won't have too much effect on water quality in Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay and the surf beaches.

But all the rain in the west this week filled the creeks and rivers and stormwater drains that flow into Sydney's waterways, bringing soil and mud and more.

Hawkesbury River /Broken Bay today ...an enormous amount of silt and debris after the 14+ metre flood height. #sydneyfloods #SydneyStorm @abcnews @abcsydney #hawkesburyflood pic.twitter.com/ZVkBCx3izU

— Nat Bromhead🚴ðŸ�¼‍♂ï¸�🇦🇺 (@natbromhead) March 10, 2022

That's why Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay and Broken Bay and Pittwater at the mouth of the Hawkesbury are far from their usual blue selves this week, and may not be for quite a while.