Western Angler Article

To capture fish is not all the fishing - by Zane Grey

Greg Milner and his mates experienced mind blowing land-based sport fishing, along with a sense of history and remoteness, during a landmark trip to fish Dirk Hartog Island's wild western side. Most Australians might well be able to trace their ancestry back to Holland, instead of the United Kingdom, if Dirk Hartog had simply been better equipped. Had the 17th Century Netherlander possessed some basic spin gear, the crudest of lures, and a rudimentary cliff gaff, young Dirk could have sent a message back to his masters in the Dutch Eats India Company thus: "From the ship Eendracht, the Great South Land, to our Wise, Discrete, Benevolent Directors, Amsterdam. Sod the Spice Islands, we're hopping into some humungous critters down here. Tell Wilem, Cornelius and the boys to get a move on while they're on the bite. Send supplies, and don't forget the Gouda. See you in a year or two. Tight lines. Dirk. October 25, 1616."

Alas, Dutch records don't go into too much detail, but Hartog obviously had no idea of the quality of the water into which he was emptying the Eendracht's marine potties. He took one look at the place, fetched a tin plate from the galley, had it hammered flat, scratched a few words, nailed it to a post and high tailed it to Indonesia. Had the above message been received in Holland, Captain Cook wouldn't have got a look-in. We might all be wearing clogs, growing tulips and living in windmills. A windmill, come to think of it, might have been more fitting accommodation for our little party's first night on the island Dirk Hartog rejected. Certainly, it would not have lacked for wind.

Our arrival at Urchin Point, spitting distance from Cape Inscription where Dirk Hartog nailed the famous plate, had come after a nine hour drive from Perth, a cyclone-enforced overnight stay in Denham, a two hour charter boat crossing, and a three hour grind through the scrub with Nick Wardle at the wheel of the island's 12-seat OKA. It might seem like a hell of a lot of trouble just to go fishing, but consider the mucking around the Dutch were prepared to endure just for a boat load of pepper. Zane Grey knew his onions when he penned an immortal phrase at the beginning of the story.

The island is run by the Wardle family. And when you run your own island, you get to decide who steps ashore and who doesn't. When Hartog stepped ashore in 1616 he had the place to himself, and so did we as we unloaded from Les Fewster's 15 metre Ocean Invader what appeared to be several semi-trailer loads of tackle, camping gear and 'refreshments', but which in fact was only enough to partly submerge the small barge brought alongside by an astonished Kieran Wardle. "You blokes staying for a month, or just a week?" he muttered. At just 21, Nick's brother Kieran has shouldered the task of running the island, with the help of 20 year old girlfriend Tori Pyman, who was hired as chef for a ten day job. That was 18 months ago.

As we talked and drank coffee on the verandah of the limestone block homestead 50 metres up the beach, it was clear they both regarded this as more adventurous than punching a keyboard back in a city office. Adventure was invented for the young. But there's no rule that says six middle aged men can't wind the clock back for a week. The homestead is on the eastern or the lee side, where barely a handful of people have ever fished; to walk in the footsteps of the explorers; and to tell each other outrageous lies, the latter a task for which I felt we were over prepared, judging by the amount of spirituous and fermented beverages on hand. We'd headed north in the OKA, across vegetation so low and devoid of trees it's more like ground cover than scrub. Arborially challenged, at no point does the topography threaten to interfere with the view of the vertically challenged.

The camp came equipped with a rough shelter (it could have been less rough, but the wind had torn much of the roof away), a rainwater tank, tables and chairs, a gas barbecue, a freezer and a stove. Nick had brought a twin cylinder petrol generator which, as well as electricity, generated just enough noise to effectively drown out the pleasant rumble of the surf breaking on the beach 40 metres away. A shovel was supplied for the basics of nature.

That first night, intermittent Indian Ocean squalls beat a tattoo on the sides of my tent, which heaved loudly in and out like an asthmatic lung with each gust. Every ten second s or so the fly threatened to disappear with a noise like Clint Eastwood's stockwhip in Rawhide. I finally found out why they call it a fly: because of its propensity to float skywards in the manner of a gas filled meteorology balloon. I lay awake imagining myself being the only one of our party lying awake. I wished I'd packed a tent more like the compact ones the others had brought - low, aerodynamic little numbers which, instead of behaving like a spinnaker, could employ an emaciated pygmy saltbush as an ample windbreak. They'd slung off at my accommodation (which I had commandeered from a teenage son; he had yet to use it so I assured him it was in safe hands), sneeringly referring to it as the Hartog Hilton. But I could stand up in it, and while it was noisy, I remained dry, at least while it clung grimly to the sand.

I was, however, wearily relieved when a loud bang announced the breaking of dawn. It was Ian Ferguson, clanking the kettle on the stove in the gloom. "Jeez, what a bastard of a night. And WET! There's a couple of tailor inside me tent, they reckon it's wetter in there than out. How'd you sleep anyway?" "Fine," I lied. I was secretly pleased as the others joined the chorus. Ron D'Raine, John Mokryzcki, Warren Skett and Guy Magowan all emerged with faces like middle aged twisted sandshoes. It took us a while to find Nick Wardle. He'd holed up in the enclosed trailer we'd towed with us behind the island's OKA, keenly aware that he'd brought us to the most exposed camping spot on the entire 70 000 hectare island, and didn't want a bar of any tents.

Thankfully the day after our first sleepless night dawned rainfree, with a fresh southerly. I immediately began the well-entrenched land-based sports fisherman's ritual of donating lures, preferably expensive ones, to the ocean. First to go was a little short bibbed Bomber. Launched on a n 8kg spin out fit from a small headland directly in front of the camp, and retrieved slowly through the wash of a two metre swell, it was snatched by a decent sized spanish mackeral which leaped clear of the suds once then promptly wrapped the line around a submerged rock. It was one of the many spaniards we were not to land this week. Learning my lesson quickly, I re-armed from an arsenal of homemade leadhead jigs manufactured specially for the trip, and hooked up the first cast with an acrobatic tailor of (I guessed) about four kilos. This too took advantage of the rocky obstacle course I'd chosen to negotiate. I wept as the line went slack. "Wouldn't bother there," advised Nick. Where then? "The Block, coupla kays down the track. Clean platform, no ledges, cliff gaff straight down. Easy.

" The block, as we were to discover, is possibly one of only three fishable points on the entire western side of the island. The rest is mostly murderous sheer 30-50 metre cliff, pounded by the swell and guarded by sea level ledges meaner than Pauline Hanson's eyes. Nick parked the OKA 100 metres from a point that tapered down to within 6 or 7 metres of the water, a near perfect fishing platform facing north. It was relatively flat, there was plenty of room for 20 people, let alone six of us, and the rocky obstacles at the bottom where easily negotiable. It was just like fishing from the back of a boat, but a lot steadier. And with nobody else within cooee, what luxury it was to to be able to leave our gear were it lay, and go back to the camp for lunch. There was also another advantage - it was absolutely clean, completely lacking the bits of old line, plastic mulie bags, empty beer cans and yellowing newspaper stuffed into crevices that despoil every popular spot from Kununurra to Esperance. We resolved to keep it that way.

After 20 years fishing, I've become accustomed to the objects of my chosen passion being given advance warning of my approach, and thus lying doggo for the duration of my stay. But the normally infallible PEWBS (Piscatorial Early Warning Buggeroff System) had failed; they were everywhere - the water boiled with activity just metre's away. It was a scaly smorgasbord of fat snapper, huge tailor, trevally, emperor and half a dozen other varieties, darting in and out at our feet. For the dedicated boat fishermen, it was an eye opener to rock fishing at it best. All that morning Nick was kept busy with the cliff gaff. Often there would be two or three of us hooked up at once, waiting our turn for Nick's Gaffing Services.

At Cape inscription that afternoon, under rainbows that grew from the sea we stood on the very spot where Hartog's men left that pewter memorial, and marvelled that nothing more substantial than a weathered timber posts marks the first European landfall on Australian soil. (Hartog's plate stood there for 80 years, until Wilem de Vlamingh came along and swiped it in 1697, leaving his own for posterity. But posterity wasn't forever even in those days. Frenchman Louis de Freycinet snaffled the Vlamingh plate in 1818. Somebody once said that France has produced a million aristocrats, not a single gentleman. From surf washed reef in Turtle Bay below, we cast lures and mulies for spangled emperor and shark mackerel.

Ron D'Raine wandered off in search of that perfect platform, and found one that must have been terrific one minute and awash the next. He came back half an hour later looking like he had won second prize in a Chinese 'death of a thousand cuts' competition. First prize was death. He lived, just barely, and for the rest of the week hobbled around in agony. I cooked sharkie that night, wrinkling my nose at the ammonia smell that everybody else insisted had disappeared. But that was just an entree. We feasted on snapper baked in foil with butter, garlic and fresh chilli, and a teriyaki marinade.

The next day was even better - clear blue skies and a light off-shore easterly; straight back to The Block. Now it was really pumping.Big spanish mackeral , mackeral tuna, a plague of longtom, and pink snapper to 8 kg (I caught one on a whole guardie skipping on the surface 100 metres out under a gas balloon!) Just out of casting range, a huge tuna leapt a full five metres clear of the water. We guessed it to be well over 50 kg, probably closer to 100 kg. Rarely do we use fishers of the south get to experience activity to the extent where you get so many hook ups you can afford to experiment. John Mokrzycki even brought out the first popper he ever made. It was a bizarre contraption of wire, trebles and open ended 20 mm PVC pipe about 10cm long, a truly horrible thing attractive to neither man nor beast. It looked like it might have been used as a tool of torture in some cookie cutter third world dictatorship. But he chucked it in anyway, and I'll be damned if it didn't catch a fish first cast. A longtom, I think.

With a mind to Hal Harvey's bank balance, I was losing fish and the lures with them left, right, and centre. It happens when you're using 8kg gear off the rocks. I held a small, private memorial service after a big black Halco Laser, scarred and torn after many years of faithful service, fell to a hefty spaniard which hardly knew it was hooked. It (the lure, not the fish) popped to the surface and floated sadly about for some time before drifting away. Not content to simply consign lures to the deep I even managed to drop one down a hole in the rock. Being primarily boat fisherman, few of us had tried gas ballooning before. The how to detail is best left to the experts, but on the advice of Damien Cestrelli at Bluewater Tackle I managed to put together a serviceable rig for skipping a whole mullet. With the big helium-filled balloon dancing above the water 150 metres out, I jammed the take no prisoners 24 kg Shimano outfit into a rock crevice, and went off to do some spin fishing 30 metres away. By the time I heard the rachet above the wind, 300 metres of line had peeled off. It must have been a helluva shark. I got most of it back though, before the animal sounded under a bombie. Goodbye ballon, leader, trace, hooks, fish.

Fishing from a high rock platform, a long way from tackle shops or medical help, taught us a few things pretty quickly:
1. Carry plenty of lures. You need lures that will stay in the water right up the rock wall. Poppers aren't so effective from that height (although we caught fish with them), but we found jigs and bibbed minnows like Rapalas, Lasers and Bombers deadly, as well as the high-speed bibless ones.
2.Sharpen every hook, re-tie every knot, properly. When there's a lot of action, it's hard to resist the temptation to simply grab a lure and fling it. We lost a number of fish that way. Old bulls and young bulls.
3. Next time, we'll take some sort of harness for the gaff gofer. This thought was prompted by Nick Wardles subtle warning as Ian Ferguson tottered on the edge with a stiff southerly at his back and a flexible tiger shark cruising below, trying to sink the gaff into a leaping trevally: "You blokes better be bloody careful. I'm buggered if I'm goin' in after yer!" He was only half kidding. Perched on the brink of a cliff over an unforgiving sea full of toothy wild animals, while wielding knives, hooks and other potentially lethal artillery, the threat of serious injury is a real one. No wonder then that the Wardles never let people go this far from help without an escort.

Wanting to try something different, we got Nick to drive us an hour and a half to Charlie's Harbour, halfway down the island. Unfortunately the weather had turned, with a stiff North Easterly blowing onto the only piece of rock capable of being fished from. There were still plenty of snapper and trevally, but it was hard work. We had a quick look at Quoin Head (in a southerly, it would be brilliant), and caught nothing but longtom.

After three perfect days, the weather turned sour. Nobody fancied the task of packing tents in the rain, so we headed back to the homestead, and a more sedate kind of fishing, for flathead and whiting on fly and floppy tail jigs in the shallows right in front of the building.The next day, in the rain, the OKA grunted back to the west coast over a lunar landscape of boulders and sand, and we peered in awe over the edge of the precipice. "Watch this," Nick shouted at us, his words whipped quickly away by the onshore gale. Through a metre wide hole in the ledge at the foot of the cliff came a whine like a Boeing turbine, and a supercharged jet of high-velocity air shot a vertical column of seaspray 50 metres into the air with each surge of swell. I tossed a rock the size of a grapefruit over the cliff. It disappeared into the blowhole, which spat it out again with the speed and trajectory of a mortar. The missile lobbed with a thud near the OKA, parked a hundred metres behind us. It was pretty silly really. I could have brained somebody.

Dawn on the last day, soft and pink. The breeze had died over night to nothing, as if nature suddenly all puffed out, and we could see Ocean Invader approaching on a millpond from kilometres out. For $ 54 Nick had arranged a mail plane on a regular run to the Useless Loop salt works to divert and pick up Guy Magowan and our frozen fillets. We had kept only a fraction of the fish we landed, but fisheries regulations outlawed the transportation of processed fish by sea. Time to go. I wondered aloud if we should have left anything to mark our passing. A commemorative plate perhaps. It seemed that kind of place. John Mokrzycki had taken care of it already. Realising the significance of our voyage, he had quietly left a pair of broken thongs back at the camp. The Polish have such a sense of ceremony.