Like many others, the business of Leura fly fisherman Peter Morse has shut down during the COVID extended lockdown in NSW.
Sixty students who were set to receive fly fishing training along the east coast from June to August have missed that opportunity. And a trip to Townsville he was planning - with students to teach along the way - has had to be postponed.
"It's been a dismal year," the 66-year-old said simply while practising at Wentworth Falls Lake recently.
But Mr Morse is not just concerned about the state of his own business. Wentworth Falls Lake, where he has been engaged in his craft for more than two decades, worries him as well.
"The degradation of the lake edge, the pressure [near the toilet block]. It's being loved to death. All the ti-tree that are holding it [the bank] together, it's going to collapse. We really need to protect that edge with rocks."
He puts the problem down to being "loved to death... It has really accelerated in the last few months and I hate to say it, but it's mostly due to the waterfowl and kids."
Mr Morse is one of only 220 master casting instructors worldwide. He loves teaching and practising in the lake. He had a TV show in the '90s called Wildfish and his grandfather, Basil Morse, managed a hatchery that provided the fingerlings to stock many of the streams of NSW.
Basil Morse also provided the fingerlings that were used to stock the highland rivers of New Guinea "and their descendants are still there", his grandson said.
"The lake has become an enormously popular location ... hundreds of people are vying for space."
He said children bored by the pirate ship were climbing and breaking the plants and he estimated the bank had eroded by about a metre in the past 18 months. Trees holding the bank together were "collapsing into the water". He had hoped council would have opened up the new playground sooner.
"I don't know why fencing is still up," he said in August. "Construction finished months ago and I bet council is renting the fencing by the day/week/month at ratepayers' expense. To reduce the pressure ... the playground needs to be opened up."
Last Friday, the park was opened for the school holidays as the NSW government started easing restrictions. Council had been concerned it might be a COVID-19 magnet, with so much interest in the new facilities.
The new area has QR check-in codes.
A council spokeswoman said the opening had been postponed "due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions", but work on the "upgrade and protection of the waterway is expected to be completed by the end of September, as long as COVID-19 does not effect this essential work".
An armoured stormwater basin is being installed and water's edge armouring put in near the new play space, following a $25,000 NSW government Community Building Partnerships Grant and additional council funding.
"These water edge treatments, and the use of sandstone blocks, will improve the access point to the water as well as protect the lake from stormwater pollution and erosion."
Stepping stones will also be restored, a safe point for a wheelchair to come to the water's edge and riparian planting will be reinforced, she added.
Mr Morse said: "The western end of the lake is in fine shape, it's the middle area that needs TLC."
