Illustration DANIELLE LEEDIE GRAY
The history of fishing in Australia is one of people and
place, for those who’ve been here longest, and for those
putting down roots, writes ALECIA SIMMONDS.
A
t dusk, Sydney’s Little Bay has a spiritual
quality. Unlike the crashing waves of nearby
Maroubra, the water here is eerily still, silken,
protected by an amphitheatre of lofty boulders.
Renaissance sunlight streams through streaky
clouds and sets the underside of gum trees
aglow. I’m perched on a rocky outcrop, tugging gently on my
fishing line, hoping that nothing tugs back. Anna Clark,
Australia’s most prominent writer of fishing history and
self-declared “fishing tragic” stands beside me. “This is the
best time to catch squid,” she says. My heart sinks.
Fishing is a paradox. One that encourages contemplation
of the forms of life that quiver and dart in the ocean, but also
presents the very real prospect of killing and eating them. “Fish”,
says Hemingway’s Old Man in The Old Man and the Sea, “I love
you and respect you very much. But I will kill you before this day
ends.” Clark tells me freshly caught squid is sweet and crunchy,
but the hooks and knives of fishing turn my mind to butchery
more than pleasure. As a sport, it seems less a meditation than a
theatre of cruelty; an attempt to claim dominion over the ocean.
Historically speaking, Clark says, I couldn’t be more wrong.
“See the pool over there?” she says, pointing to what looks
like a natural rockpool. “Archaeologists think that Eora people
might have originally made that as a fish trap – well Eora women
most likely. The fish would come into the bay and at low tide
they’d stay there, confined by the rocks.”
In her latest book The Catch, Clark describes how Eora
women would paddle out in their bark canoes, called nowies,
and drop hooks carved out of shells, while men would spear-
fish. Joseph Banks describes peering from the deck of The
Endeavour one night to see “many moving lights” bobbing in
the waters of Botany Bay, which would have been Eora women
night-fishing, using firesticks to attract fish. And when these
women went fishing they turned the harbour into a vast ➤GOURMET TRAVELLER 75