The National Water Initiative’s flow accuracy improvement project initiatives have caused experienced industry practitioners to consider adding velocity sensing technology at river station sites, which in the past have calculated discharge from level sensor records and a discharge rating curve established from a long campaign of field gaugings. The main advantage of adding velocity sensors is at sites with frequent rating curve changes and at sites where the highest gauging is well below the highest flood levels of interest, or at sites affected by loop-rating (hysteresis). Hastings River at Kooree Island is such a site, and has the longest know Australian experience with managing and using both upward looking and a side looking acoustic doppler (AD) sensors to calculate discharges. The lessons learnt so far at this site are the subject of this paper.