What Has Been Lost

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Colin Hastie is the visionary behind the developing "Sweet Spot Movement", which aims to one day link ecological restoration sites along traditional songlines through dreaming trails incorporating Indigenous law, culture, language and science with conservation efforts. It's just a dream at the moment, but perhaps you can help it become a reality with advice and support. Check out Native Land Action for more details, and join the discussion there to have your say on the direction of the movement.

The abundance of wildlife across all of Australia when Europeans arrived in 1788 was tremendous. The rivers and seas were full of fish and the land bristled with all manner of creatures that hopped, slithered, ran and crawled. The trees were alive with possums, gliders, snakes, tree kangaroos and many others, and the skies were filled with an enormous amount of birds. Early invader/pioneers often complained about the "deafening" morning chorus of birds, but didn't mind eating many of them.

An early explorer of south-east Queensland described gathering an evening meal with local aboriginals at the mouth of the Noosa River which gives a good example of such abundance. He said that within an hour they had gathered together a few wallabies, several waterfowl, heaps of shellfish, nectar from banksia blossum, honey and more. And getting the food was great fun, for example a game being made of getting the ducks and other waterfowl that were all over the river, such as swimming underneath and grabbing them by the legs.

Even my parents generation tells of many more fish than we have now, and even I can remember things that can't be seen today, such as large numbers of freshwater prawns in riverbank grasses in far north Queensland.

European ways continue to devastate our wildlife.

I have been fortunate enough to see how abundant all of Australia was when I worked on a fishing boat out of Darwin in 1994. We went south a few hundred kilometres off the Daly River lands, where there were no recreational fisherman apart from the odd charter boat, and only two commercial fishermen for the reef species and pelagics that we were chasing. I had done a fair bit of fishing on the Great Barrier Reef off Innisfail, which at times was quite good, but this was something else entirely. Before your baited hooks could reach the reef twenty metres below it first had to get past two distinct "zones" of fish. Firstly there was the Giant Trevally and Spanish Mackeral zone which would strike about one out of every five casts.

Often they would take the large sinkers we were using, but sometimes they would get hooked and more often than not we had to quickly cut the line because they were too big to catch. The boss spoke of Spanish Mackeral of up to 60 kilograms, and there is no stopping a beast like that on a handline. One Giant Trevally that I was pulling in (and they were difficult enough) gives a good example of the power of the Spanish Mackeral. It was chomped in half by a mackeral before I got it in, and you could tell when it was a mackeral rather than a shark by the guillotine-like suddenness of the strike, over in an instant.

It was a large Giant Trevally, at least fifty centimetres from top to belly. The mackeral in chomping it in half left a clean arc which was much less than a semi circle, meaning that the mackeral's mouth was considerably wider than fifty centimetres!! We would often see these magnificent creatures jump out of the water in the most spectacular fashion, flying through the air for many metres. On one occasion one flew higher than the 38-foot boat that we were in.

If your baited line got past these fish it then had to get through the Slimy Mackeral zone, which weren't nearly as big but in huge numbers. If your line managed to reach the reef it would be immediately attacked by Gold-band Snapper, various species of cod and many other types of wonderful fish. One afternoon we went in close to shore and fished for mulloway, which were once again in great abundance and large in size.

Sea turtles were everywhere. Every couple of minutes we would hear or see one taking a breath, which is much more frequent than my experiences fishing off Innisfail, when most trips you'd be lucky to see a turtle at all. Pods of Pilot Whales were often spotted, and large Tiger and Hammerhead sharks let us know that they were around. Birds were everywhere in huge numbers, in short the abundance of life was astounding.

As I metioned earlier, the amount of sea life to be seen off Innisfail is a sad comparison. However, a recent experience of my professional fisherman cousin Thomas, shows just how well sea life can recover if given a chance. Thomas was involved in a scientific study to fish an area of reef that had been protected for 12 years. The abundance of fish that he described catching that day was far more than non-protected areas, and not too far off the abundance I experienced off Daly River. I believe that this sort of rapid recovery of wildlife is also possible on land when land restoration is undertaken in the correct manner. I have had many experiences in my work as a bush regenerator of wildlife flocking to well implemented land restoration sites.

For more articles by Colin Hastie, check out River Flat Sweet Spots and Return To Native Abundance.