Transcript: Mr Charles Wilson recalls fishing in the Georges River in the early twentieth century

Description

Mr Charles Wilson was born in 1904 and [media]interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' Here he recalls the bountiful fish available to fishermen in the Georges River in the early twentieth century.

Transcript

CHARLES: I had a canoe and you couldn't sink it, it was a beautiful big twelve-foot canoe. And there was a locker in each end with a big Mintie tin, sealed, carry[ing] our stuff in. If it turned over then it wouldn't sink, you couldn't sink it, by the way it was built. But then I'd put a net across the river, and then I had a fifty-two hook line across the river. I used to catch stingrays and everything in that river. And you'd hear the tails going 'wish, wish', and a cow bell on the other end of it, and then the fishing line would fish. Any amount of perch, bream, bream was plentiful, flathead, flathead right here to the weir. I put a net across here at the weir one Saturday afternoon, come up the street here up to the hotel with the caretaker from the vineyard. I said I'm going back when the tide's in. Went back on a Sunday morning, pulled the net in. There was quite a number of flathead, but there was only the heads there, the eels ate the lot. But then if I worked around, come up with the net on a bit of a beach there, I caught quite a lot of fish there, quite a lot. [1]

References

Catherine Johnson (ed). Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900–1960 (Liverpool: Liverpool City Council, 1986). http://mylibrary.liverpool.nsw.gov.au/Electronicbooks/Lookingbackatliverpoolanoralhistory-1900-1960.pdf

Notes