As has happened for centuries, when 300 millimetres of rain on the hinterland swelled Meroo Lake, in the national park south of Ulladulla, recently, it helped collapse a sandbank that allowed the sea to enter.
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Conservationist John Perkins says Meroo's split personality as a closed and open lake creates winners and losers and triggers breeding among frogs. Meroo has the Shoalhaven's largest frog population, including threatened green and gold bell frogs.
The lake's protected status has widened the gulf between conservationists, who want its delicate ecology protected, and the Shooters and Fishers Party, who believe it should have better access for fishing.
Although fishing is allowed, a gate across the access track is locked, and the Shooters Party's Robert Brown has moved in the NSW Upper House to revoke reservation of the lake's bed.
Mr Brown said fishers had paid $32 million in licence fees for access to recreational fishing havens like the lake, and were responsible for its tidiness until locked out three years ago.
"The South Coast is chock-a-block full of grey nomads, and they love their fishing. If you stop vehicles even a few hundred metres from a place, it means older couples with their kayaks can't get in there and have no easy access," Mr Brown said.
He says his amendment bill may fizzle if unsupported by the government, but he is confident of gaining enough votes at the 2015 election to get candidate and fisherman Peter Johnson elected and the issue reinstated.
Gail Wild, a regular visitor to Meroo Lake with her family, catches bream and black fish and delights in seeing graceful stingrays and black swans shelter in the protected waters.
"Paddle-boarding is beautiful, you look down and you have all this marine life at your feet. This is our backyard, I want it kept that way for my kids," Ms Wild said.
Mr Perkins says the Shooters and Fishers are active on the South Coast, have a huge Facebook following and want to regain lost ground trying to introduce shooting in national parks, which he said "blew up in their face".
Far from blowing themselves up, Mr Brown says the national park hunting issue will see their vote go through the roof at the next election.
"Factually, we have the legislation in place which allows hunting in national parks. It's up to the minister to declare which national parks, in more remote parts of the state, can be used by hunters."
Shooters say too much bushland has been locked away, while environmentalists say a precedent for many other similar waterways would be set if Meroo was threatened by opening it to numbers of powered boats, which would inevitably degrade its delicate ecology.
