Knowledge and Meaning
A Rigorous Pursuit
By David O’Halloran
he mighty Clarence River, located in northeastern New South Wales, Australia, flows from its watershed in the Border Ranges of New South Wales and Queensland south and northeast for some 394 km before emptying into the Pacific Ocean at Yamba Bay. As rivers go, the Clarence does not match the size or might of Mark Twain’s great Mississippi or the speed and excitement of Norman Maclean’s Big Blackfoot, but it was my river. The stories of life, I think, are much more like rivers than books. As a boy, I remember learning how to read my river. Along its banks with my father and his friends, I learned how to fish, initially for sea mullet that came up the river to spawn. After catching mullet, we’d fillet them, to eat if we were desperate, but mostly to use as bait to catch bream or the true prize, the “greatest ones”—mulloway.1 These mulloway or jewel fish, which can be one to two meters (three to six feet) in length, are elusive fish, and many, many hours could easily pass before even a hint of success. Of all the things the river and my father taught me, patience was the most important. Finding deep river holes, especially at the top and bottom of the tide, was where I learned to start. Using a twelve-foot rod with heavy pound tackle, line and trace, in the earliest hours of the morning, or late at night, especially with the new moon, we’d spread the fresh mullet fillets over three large ganged hooks attached to the end of our lines, and we’d be sure to leave a long tail. Remaining alert, we’d cast out and play what all anglers come to appreciate as the inherent beauty in fishing—the waiting game. For it is within the waiting that we all begin to think, reflect and contemplate—and real fishermen do plenty of waiting. After picking up the bait, a mulloway tends initially to move with it for a short time. I learned to lean in and slowly wind to set the hook. If you jerk it, move too fast, the bait can easily pull from the fish’s mouth. Once hooked though,
T
Argyosomus hololepidotus (mulloway or jewel fish).
you have to strike hard. The mulloway will always make at least one good, hard run. The line needs to be released but only with the application of a controlling pressure to the spool so as not to release too much of the line too quickly. A first run can easily tear up 100 meters of line. When the fish begins to tire, you begin winding, turning the fish and bringing it in, always ready for the second run. Mulloway love to play “possum” and often come in easy at the end of the first run, and just before the bank, turn suddenly and make the second. After the second run, you start to tighten your drag on the reel, increasing resistance, and begin to pull in. Catching and ultimately landing the “greatest ones” isn’t easy. It involves several complex steps, knowledge of the fish, their habitat, and the rhythms of the river, and it involves enormous doses of patience. It requires the rigorous pursuit of pre-established goals driven by real interest, true passion, and a healthy balance between this and the rest of life. In my opening letter this year, I made reference to Mark Twain’s Old Times on the Mississippi and his wanting “ever so much” to be a steamboat pilot.2 Old Times concerns the great trial and tribulation involved in becoming a steamboat pilot and Twain’s exceptional teacher, Bixby, who “learned” him the river. The first step in Twain’s education was to record his observations, develop his interest and his passion for the river. It was romantic; he dreamed, he played, he imagined. Twain did what all children do. It is through imagination and play—the first and essential step in pursuing any goal, learning anything—that Twain’s learning to be a steamboat pilot began. He had “the bug.” The next step in Twain’s education required his learning the river’s complexity. Unlike the first, this step was not as clean; it happened over time. It ebbed and flowed like a tide; was fraught with challenges and failures. Twain learned, for example, that the great Mississippi was a completely different river when traveling upstream than when traveling downstream, at different times of the day, or at different tides, currents, depths, and seasons. The romance of step one in his learning process became the gritty reality of step two. Learning, Twain realized, was hard work. It was going to require more than imagination, play, and romance. “The midnight watch,” Twain recalls at one point in Old Times, “was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I
4? •? Saint David’s Magazine