Ho, ho ho, I know Christmas is a fair way off right now, but if there is a fisherman in your life, then consider the present sorted. Historian Anna Clark’s The Catch, the Story of Fishing in Australia is the Christmas present for him or her!

Don’t take my word for it. First, I gave the book to The Spouse for his inspection. The Spouse developed the Victorian Fisheries Act 1995, and what he doesn’t know about fishing issues isn’t worth bothering about. He thought it was a really beaut book, and also had this to say:

There are three kinds of fishing:
•subsistence fishing (including Indigenous fishing), where the fish is caught primarily for food
•recreational fishing, where the purpose is primarily a leisure activity
•commercial fishing, which is fishing for sale, to make a profit.

Clark’s books is primarily about the first two, but that’s not a criticism. Most people are not going to be very interested in reading about commercial fishing, not unless they’re like us, dependent on a viable, sustainable fishing industry as a source of the fish we put on the table three times a week.

One of the ground-breaking aspects of the Victorian Fisheries Act 1995 was that it considered Indigenous fishing rights, so it is pleasing to see that Clark begins her story with the story of Indigenous fishing practice. And this is where the NLA’s image collection comes into its own, because there are reproductions of sketches and paintings which show how things were done during early settlement. (There are also many images from other collections such as Melbourne’s own State Library of Victoria). However Clark is careful to say that of course the practices recorded by the colonial artists give us a glimpse into fishing before European colonisation.

While early colonial sketches and paintings give wonderful snapshots of Indigenous fishers, they do so from a distinctly European perspective. Written accounts are similarly revealing – and we should be grateful for the faithful record of fishing practices and winning catches they’ve produced – but we can’t forget that these early settlers viewed Indigenous society through a distinctly colonial lens.

Sometimes, Indigenous perspectives creep in. Along the banks and floodplains of the Murray River, scars on the mighty trunks of river red gums, from which canoes have been cut, reveal an Indigenous presence long before any record of European material culture in Australia. Enormous engravings of whales, fish and sharks etched into sandstone platforms around Sydney and into the rugged iron ore of the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia have a provenance thousands of years older than any colonial etching or journal entry. Paintings in smoke-stained caves across northern Australia show equally distinctive Indigenous readings of fish feats and feasts. And the remnants of millions of Indigenous seafood meals can be seen in middens around the country that cascade through dirt, sand and mud at the water’s edge. (p.17)

But, fascinating as the Indigenous story is, there is much more to this history than this.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/09/24/the-catch-the-story-of-fishing-in-australia-... ( )