Fresh Fish Here

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.

- Alecia Simmonds

At 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 “Archaeologists think that Eora people might have originally made that as a fish trap – well Eora women most likely.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 spearfish. Joseph Banks describes peering from the deck of