The Colonial Mortuary Bard; 'Reo, The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia

by Louis Becke

  THE BLACK BREAM OF AUSTRALIA

  Next to the lordly and brilliant-hued schnapper, the big black breamof the deep harbour waters of the east coast of Australia is the finestfish of the bream species that have ever been caught. Thirty years ago,in the hundreds of bays which indent the shores of Sydney harbour, andalong the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers, they were very plentiful andof great size; now, one over 3 lbs. is seldom caught, for the greedyand dirty Italian and Greek fishermen who infest the harbour with theirfine-meshed nets have practically exterminated them. In other harboursof New South Wales, however--notably Jervis and Twofold Bays--thesehandsome fish are still plentiful, and there I have caught them winterand summer, during the day under a hot and blazing sun, and on dark,calm nights.

  In shape the black bream is exactly as his brighter-hued brother, buthis scales are of a dark colour, like partially tarnished silver; he isbroader and heavier about the head and shoulders, and he swims in amore leisurely, though equally cautious, manner, always bringing-tothe instant anything unusual attracts his attention. Then, with gentlyundulating tail and steady eye, he regards the object before him, orwatches a shadow above with the keenest scrutiny. If it is a small, deadfish, or other food which is sinking, say ten yards in front, he willgradually come up closer and closer, till he satisfies himself thatthere is no line attached--then he makes a lightning-like dart, andvanishes in an instant with the morsel between his strong, thick jaws.If, however, he sees the most tempting bait--a young yellow-tail, apiece of white and red octopus tentacle, or a small, silvery mullet--anddetects even a fine silk line attached to the cleverly hidden hook, hemakes a stern-board for a foot or two, still eyeing the descendingbait; then, with languid contempt, he slowly turns away, and swims offelsewhere.

  In my boyhood's days black-bream fishing was a never-ending source ofdelight to my brothers and myself. We lived at Mosman's Bay, one ofthe deepest and most picturesque of the many beautiful inlets of SydneyHarbour. The place is now a populous marine suburb with terraces ofshoddy, jerry-built atrocities crowding closely around many beautifulhouses with spacious grounds surrounded by handsome trees. Threepennysteamers, packed with people, run every half-hour from Sydney, and theonce beautiful dell at the head of the bay, into which a crystal streamof water ran, is as squalid and detestable as a Twickenham lane insummer, when the path is strewn with bits of greasy newspaper which haveheld fried fish.

  But in the days of which I speak, Mosman's Bay was truly a lovely spot,dear to the soul of the true fisherman. Our house--a great quadrangular,one-storied stone building, with a courtyard in the centre--was the onlyone within a radius of three miles. It had been built by convict handsfor a wealthy man, and had cost, with its grounds and magnificentcarriage drives, vineyards, and gardens, many thousand pounds. Thenthe owner died, bankrupt, and for years it remained untenanted, therecrudescent bush slowly enveloping its once highly cultivated lands,and the deadly black snake, iguana, and 'possum harbouring among thedeserted outbuildings. But to us boys (when our father rented the place,and the family settled down in it for a two years' sojourn) the lonelyhouse was a palace of beautiful imagination--and solid, delightfulfact, when we began to explore the surrounding bush, the deep, clear,undisturbed waters of the bay, and a shallow lagoon, dry at low water,at its head.

  Across this lagoon, at the end near the deep water, a causeway ofstone had been built fifty-five years before (in 1820) as a means ofcommunication by road with Sydney. In the centre an opening had beenleft, about twenty feet wide, and across this a wooden bridge had beenerected. It had decayed and vanished long, long years before we firstsaw the place; but the trunk of a great ironbark tree now served equallyas well, and here, seated upon it as the tide began to flow in andinundate the quarter-mile of dry sand beyond, we would watch the swarmsof fish passing in with the sweeping current.

  First with the tide would come perhaps a school ot small blue and silvergar-fish, their scarlet-tipped upper mandibles showing clear of thewater; then a thick, compact battalion of short, dumpy grey mullet,eager to get up to the head of the lagoon to the fresh water whichall of their kind love; then communities of half a dozen of grey andblack-striped "black fish" would dart through to feed upon the greenweed which grew on the inner side of the stone causeway. Then a hideous,evil-eyed "stingaree," with slowly-waving outspread flappers, and long,whip-like tail, follows, intent upon the cockles and soft-shell clamswhich he can so easily discover in the sand when he throws it upwardsand outwards by the fan-like action of his thin, leathery sides. Againmore mullet--big fellows these--with yellow, prehensile mouths, whichprotrude and withdraw as they swim, and are fitted with a strainingapparatus of bristles, like those on the mandibles of a musk duck. Theyfeed only on minute organisms, and will not look at a bait, except itbe the tiny worm which lives in the long celluroid tubes of the coralgrowing upon _congewei_. And then you must have a line as fine ashorsehair, and a hook small enough--but strong enough to hold athree-pound fish--to tempt them.

  As the tide rose higher, and the incoming water bubbled and hissed as itpoured through the narrow entrance underneath the tree-bole on whichwe sat, red bream, silvery bream, and countless myriads of the small,staring-eyed and delicate fish, locally known as "hardy-heads," wouldrush in, to return to the deeper waters of the bay as the tide began tofall.

  Sometimes--and perhaps "Red Spinner" of the _Field_ may have seen thesame thing in his piscatorial wanderings in the Antipodes--huge gar-fishof three or four feet in length, with needle-toothed, narrow jaws, andwith bright, silvery, sinuous bodies, as thick as a man's arm, wouldswim languidly in, seeking for the young mullet and gar-fish which hadpreceded them into the shallow waters beyond. These could be caughtby the hand by suddenly gripping them just abaft of the head. A MoruyaRiver black boy, named "Cass" (_i.e._, Casanova), who had been broughtup with white people almost from infancy, was a past-master in this sortof work. Lying lengthwise upon the tree which bridged the opening, hewould watch the giant gars passing in, swimming on the surface. Then hisright arm would dart down, and in an instant a quivering, twisting, andgleaming "Long Tom" (as we called them) would be held aloft for a momentand then thrown into a flour-sack held open in readiness to receive it.

  Surely this was "sport" in the full sense of the word; for although"Long Tom" is as greedy as a pike, and can be very easily caught by afloating bait when he is hungry, it is not every one who can whip himout of the water in this manner.

  There were at least four varieties of mullet which frequented the bay,and in the summer we frequently caught numbers of all four in the lagoonby running a net across the narrow opening, and when the tide ran outwe could discern their shining bodies hiding under the black-leavedsea-grass which grew in some depressions and was covered, even at lowtide, by a few inches of water. Two of the four I have described; andnow single specimens of the third dart in--slenderly-bodied, handsomefish about a foot long. They are one of the few varieties of mulletwhich will take a hook, and rare sport they give, as the moment theyfeel the line they leap to and fro on the surface, in a series of jumpsand somersaults, and very often succeed in escaping, as their jaws arevery soft and thin.

  By the time it is slack water there is a depth of six feet covering thesandy bottom of the lagoon, the rush and bubble under the tree-bole hasceased, and every stone, weed, and shell is revealed. Now is the time tolook on the deep-water side of the causeway for the big black bream.

  There they are--thirty, fifty--perhaps a hundred of them, swimminggently to and fro outside the entrance, longing, yet afraid to enter. Asyou stand up, and your shadow falls upon their line of vision, they"go about" and turn head on to watch, sometimes remaining in the sameposition, with gently moving fins and tails, for five minutes; sometimessinking down to the blue depths beyond, their outlines looming grey andindistinct as they descend, to reappear again in a few minutes, almoston the surface, waiting for the dead mullet or gar-fish which you mayperhaps throw to them.

  The old ex-Tasmanian convict who was employe
d to attend to the boatin which we boys went across to Sydney three days a week, weatherpermitting, to attend school, had told us that we "couldn't hook e'er aone o' thim black bream; the divils is that cunning, masters, that youcan't do it. So don't thry it. 'Tis on'y a-waistin' time."

  But we knew better; we were born in the colony--in a seaport town onthe northern coast--and the aborigines of the Hastings River tribe hadtaught us many valuable secrets, one of which was how to catch blackbream in the broad light of day as the tide flowed over a long stretchof sand, bare at low water, at the mouth of a certain "blind" creek afew miles above the noisy, surf-swept bar. But here, in Mosman'sBay, in Sydney, we had not the cunningly devised gear of our blackfriends--the principal article of which was the large uni-valve_aliotis_ shell--to help us, so we set to work and devised a plan of ourown, which answered splendidly, and gave us glorious sport.

  When the tide was out and the sands were dry, carrying a basketcontaining half a dozen strong lines with short-shanked, thick hooks,and two or three dozen young gar-fish, mullet, or tentacles of theoctopus, we would set to work. Baiting each hook so carefully that nopart of it was left uncovered, we dug a hole in the sand, in which itwas then partly buried; then we scooped out with our hands a narrowtrench about six inches deep and thirty or forty yards in length, intowhich the line was laid, covered up roughly, and the end taken to theshore. After we had accomplished laying our lines, radiating right andleft, in this manner we covered each tempting bait with an ordinarycrockery flower-pot, weighted on the top with a stone to keep it in itsplace, and then a thin tripping-line was passed through the round hole,and secured to a wooden cross-piece underneath. These tripping-lineswere then brought ashore, and our preparations were complete.

  "But why," one may ask, "all this elaborate detail, this burying oflines, and, most absurd of all, the covering up of the baited hook witha flowerpot?"

  Simply this. As the tide flows in over the sand there come with it,first of all, myriads of small garfish, mullet, and lively red bream,who, if the bait were left exposed, would at once gather round and beginto nibble and tug at it. Then perhaps a swiftly swimming "Long Tom,"hungry and defiant, may dart upon it with his terrible teethed jaws, orthe great goggle-eyed, floundering sting-ray, as he flaps along his way,might suck it into his toothless but bony and greedy mouth; and thenhundreds and hundreds of small silvery bream would bite, tug, and dragout, and finally reveal the line attached, and then the scheme has cometo naught, for once the cute and lordly black bream sees a line he isoff, with a contemptuous eye and a lazy, proud sweep of tail.

  When the tide was near the full flood we would take the ends of ourfishing- and tripping-lines in our hands and seat ourselves upon thehigh sandstone boulders which fringed the sides of the bay, and fromwhence we could command a clear view of the water below. Then, slowlyand carefully, we tripped the flower-pots covering the baits, and hauledthem in over the smooth sandy bottom, and, with the baited lines grippedtight in the four fingers of our right hands, we watched and waited.

  Generally, in such calm, transparent water, we could, to our addeddelight, see the big bream come swimming along, moving haughtily throughthe crowds of small fry--yellow-tail, ground mullet, and trumpeters.Presently, as one of them caught sight of a small shining silvery mullet(or a luscious-looking octopus tentacle) lying on the sand, the languidgrace of his course would cease, the broad, many-masted dorsal finbecome erect, and he would come to a dead stop, his bright, eager eyebent on the prize before him. Was it a delusion and a snare? No!How could it be? No treacherous line was there--only the beautifulshimmering scales of a delicious silvery-sided young mullet, lying dead,with a thin coating of current-drifted sand upon it. He darts forward,and in another instant the hook is struck deep into the tough grizzleof his white throat; the line is as taut as a steel wire, and he isstraining every ounce of his fighting six or eight pounds' weight tohead seawards into deep water.

  Slowly and steadily with him, else his many brothers will take alarm,and the rest of the carefully laid baits will be left to become the preyof small "flatheads," or greedy, blue-legged spidery crabs. Once hishead is turned, providing he is well hooked, he is safe, and although itmay take you ten minutes ere you haul him into such shallow water thathe cannot swim upright, and he falls over upon his broad, noble side,and slides out upon the sand, it is a ten minutes of joy unalloyed tothe youthful fisherman who takes no heed of two other lines as taut ashis own, and only prays softly to himself that his may be the biggestfish of the three.

  Generally, we managed to get a fish upon every one of the ten or twelvelines we set in this manner, and as we always used short, stout-shankedhooks of the best make, we rarely lost one. On one occasion, however, aten-foot sawfish seized one of our baits, and then another and another,and in five minutes the brute had entangled himself amongst the rest ofthe lines so thoroughly that our old convict boatman, who was watchingus from his hut, yelled out, as he saw the creature's serrated snoutraised high out of the water as it lashed its long, sinuous tail to andfro, to "play him" till he "druv an iron into it." He thought it was awhale of some sort, and, jumping into a dinghy, he pulled out towardsit, just in time to see our stout lines part one after another, and the"sawfish" sail off none the worse for a few miserable hooks in his jawsand a hundred fathoms of stout fishing lines encircling his body.

  This old Bill Duggan--he had "done" twenty-one years in that abodeof horror, Port Arthur in Tasmania, for a variegated assortment ofcrimes--always took a deep interest in our black-bream fishing, andfreely gave us a shilling for each one we gave him.

  He told us that by taking them to Sydney he could sell them for twoshillings each, and that he would send the money to a lone, widowedsister who lived in Bridgnorth, England. Our mother deeply sympathisedwith the aged William (our father said he was a lying old ruffian), andalways let him take the boat and pull over to Sydney to sell the fish.He generally came back drunk after twenty-four hours' absence, and saidthe sun had affected him. But Nemesis came at last.

  One day some of the officers of H.M.S. _Challenger_, with some Sydneyfriends, came to spend a Saturday and Sunday with us. It rained hard onthe Saturday night, and the stream which fell into the head of the baybecame a roaring torrent, sending a broad line of yellow, muddyfoam through the narrow opening of the causeway, which I have beforementioned, into the harbour.

  Sadly disappointed that we could not give our guests the sport which wehad promised them, we sat upon the causeway and gazed blankly uponthe yellowed waters of the bay with bitterness in our hearts. Suddenly"Cass," the Moruya River black boy, who was standing beside us, turnedto us with a smile illumining his sooty face.

  "What for you coola (angry)? Now the time to catch big pfeller brackbream. Water plenty pfeller muddy. Brack bream baal (is not) afraid ofline now."

  I, being the youngest, was sent off, with furious brotherly threatsand yells, to our guests, to tell them to come down at once withtheir fishing tackle. I tore up the path and reached the house. Thefirst-lieutenant, commodore's secretary, and two ladies at once roseto the occasion, seized their beautiful rods (at which my brothers andmyself were undecided whether to laugh in contempt or to profoundlyadmire) and followed me down to the causeway.

  Before we reached there Billy Duggan and my brothers had already landedhalf a dozen splendid fish, one of which, of over ten pounds, was heldup to us for inspection as a curiosity, inasmuch as a deep semicircularpiece had been bitten out of its back (just above the tail) by a sharkor some other predatory fish. The wound had healed over perfectly,although its inner edge was within a quarter of an inch of the backbone.

  With a brief glance at the fish already taken, the two officers and theladies had their rods ready, and made a cast into the surging, yellowwaters, with disastrous results, for in less than three minutes everyone of them had hooked a fish--and lost it.

  "Ye're no fishing for finnickin' graylin', or such like pretty-prettiesav of the ould counthry," said the old convict patronisingly, as his
toothless mouth expanded into a grin. "These blue-nosed devils wouldbreak the heart and soul av the best greenheart as was iver grown. Laydown thim sthicks an' take wan of these," and he pointed to some thicklines, ready coiled and baited with pieces of raw beef. "Just have thimout into the wather, and hould on like grim death--that's all. Sure theboys here have taught me a mighty lot I niver larned before."

  Our visitors "hived" out the already baited lines, and caught a dozenor more of splendid fish, varying from 6 lbs. to 10 lbs. in weight, andthen, as a drenching downpour of rain blotted out everything around us,we went home, leaving our take with Billy, with the exception of twoor three of the largest, which we brought home with us for supper. Hewhispered to my brothers and myself that he would give us "ten bob" forthe lot; and as the old villain's money was extremely useful to us, andour parents knew nothing about our dealings with the ancient reprobate,we cheerfully agreed to the "ten bob" suggestion.

  But, as I have said, Nemesis was near to William Duggan, Esq., overthis matter of the black bream, for on the following Tuesday Lieut.H------happened across the leading fishmonger's shop in Hunter Street,where there were displayed several splendid black bream. One of these,he noticed, had a large piece bitten out of the back, and he at oncerecognised it. He stepped inside and asked the black-moustached Greciangentleman who attended to the counter the price of the fish, and wherethey were caught.

  "Nine shillings each, sir. They are a very scarce fish, and we get themonly from one man, an old fellow who makes his living by catching themin Mosman's Bay. We give him five shillings each for every fish over 6lbs., and seven-and-sixpence for every one over 10 lbs. No one else butthis old fellow can catch black bream of this size. He knows the trick."

  H----, thinking he was doing us boys a good turn, wrote a line to ourfather, telling him in a humorous manner all about this particularwretched back-bitten black bream which he had recognised, and the pricehe had been asked for it. Then my father, having no sense of humour,gave us, one and all, a sound thrashing for taking money from oldDuggan, who thereafter sold our black bream to a hawker man whotravelled around in a spring cart, and gave him three shillings each,out of which we got two, and spent at a ship chandler's in buying freshtackle.

  For 'twas not the "filthy lucre" we wanted, only the sport.