the far side of the world

Brother Charles is working on a water project in Kununurra, the far north of western Australia.

I like to imagine if I dug straight down from my back yard, starting from one of the potholes the dog has inflicted on the lawn in his boredom, we would come out somewhere in that vicinity.



There the sun is shining. We could then go fishing together, perhaps for these cute baby barramundi.

Or, we could find sun and solitude on Willies Creek.

With luck the queenfish and oxeye tarpon might be around.

Here on the far side of the world I had to take a day's leave or lose it, so went up to the inlet of the reservoir. There are persistent rumors of a run of both trout and walleye in the spring up there, but I've never seen either in twenty springs of trying.

Didn't find a run as such, still got one hook-jawed 21", as big as I've ever caught in this drainage. Fishing a 7-wt with 3x leader hopefully for walleye, he still ran me around quite a bit.

 
Then the snow came pelting down again. I left to get the oil changed, a haircut, and made a dentist appointment to deal with my broken molar. Will this mad gay whirl ever cease ?

The Idyll of the Carp

The Idyll of the Carp
by Henry Austin Dobson

(The scene is in a garden - where you please,
so that it lie in France, and have withal
Its gray-stoned pond beneath the arching trees,
And Triton huge, with moss for coronal.
A Princess,- feeding fish. To her Denise.)

The Princess~~
These, Denise, are my Suitors!

Denise~
Where?

The Princess~~
These fish.
I feed them daily here at morn and night
With crumbs of favour, - scraps of graciousness,
Not meant, indeed, to mean the thing they wish,
But serving just to edge an appetite.
( Throwing bread. )
Make haste, Messieurs! Make haste, then! Hurry.
See, -
See how they swim! Would you not say, confess,
Some crowd of Courtiers in the audience hall,
When the King comes?

Denise~
You're jesting!

The Princess~
Not at all.
Watch but the great one yonder! There's the Duke; -
Those gill-marks mean his Order of St. Luke;
Those old skin-stains his boasted quarterings.
Look what a swirl and roll of tide he brings;
Have you not marked him thus, with crest in air,
Breathing disdain, descend the palace-stair?
You surely have, Denise.

Denise~
I think I have.
But there's another, older and more grave, -
The one that wears the round patch on the throat,
And swims with such slow fins. Is he of note?

The Princess~
Why, that's my good chambellan - with his seal.
A kind old man! - he carves me orange-peel
In quaint devices at refection-hours,
Equips my sweet-pouch, brings me morning flowers,
Or chirrups madrigals with old, sweet words,
Such as men loved when people wooed like birds
And spoke the true note first. No suitor he,
Yet loves me too, - though in a graybeard's key.

Denise~
Look, Madam, look! - a fish without a stain!
O speckless, fleckless fish! Who is it, pray,
That bears him so discreetly?

The Princess~
Fontenay.
You know him not? My prince of shining locks!
My pearl! - my Phoenix! - my pomander-box!
He loves not Me, alas! The man's too vain!
He loves his doublet better than my suit, -
His graces than my favours. Still his sash
Sits not amiss, and he can touch the lute
Not wholly out of tune -

Denise~
Ai! what a splash!
Who is it comes with such a sudden dash
Plump i' the midst, and leaps the others clear?

The Princess~
Ho! for a trumpet! Let the bells be rung!
Baron of Sans-terre , Lord of Pres-en-Cieux ,
Vidame of Vol-au-Vent - " et aultres lieux! "
Bah! How I hate his Gasconading tongue!
Why, that's my bragging Bravo-Musketeer -
My carpet cut-throat, valiant by a scar
Got in a brawl that stands for Spanish war: -
His very life's a splash!

Denise~
I'd rather wear
E'en such a patched and melancholy air,
As his, - that motley one, - who keeps the wall,
And hugs his own lean thoughts for carnival.

The Princess~
My frankest wooer! Thus his love he tells
To mournful moving of his cap and bells.
He loves me (so he saith) as Slaves the Free, -
As Cowards War, - as young Maids Constancy.
Item , he loves me as the Hawk the Dove;
He loves me as the Inquisition Thought; -

Denise~
" He loves? - he loves?" Why all this loving's naught!

The Princess~
And " Naught (quoth Jacquot) makes the sum of Love!"

Denise~
The cynic knave! How call you this one here? -
This small shy-looking fish, that hovers near,
And circles, like a cat around a cage,
To snatch the surplus.

The Princess~
Cherubin, the page.
'Tis but a child, yet with that roguish smile,
And those sly looks, the child will make hearts ache
Not five years hence, I prophesy. Meanwhile,
He lives to plague the swans upon the lake,
To steal my comfits, and the monkey's cake.

Denise~
And these - that swim aside - who may these be?

The Princess~

Those - are two gentlemen of Picardy,
Equal in blood, - of equal bravery: -
Moreuil and Montcornet. They hunt in pair;
I mete them morsels with an equal care,
Lest they should eat each other, - or eat Me.

Denise~
And that - and that - and that?

The Princess~
I name them not.
Those are the crowd who merely think their lot
The lighter by my land.

Denise~
And is there none
More prized than most? There surely must be one, -
A Carp of carps!

The Princess~
Ah me! - he will not come!
He swims at large, - looks shyly on, - is dumb.
Sometimes, indeed, I think he fain would nibble,
But while he stays with doubts and fears to quibble,
Some gilded fop, or mincing courtier-fribble,
Slips smartly in, - and gets the proffered crumb.
He should have all my crumbs - if he'd but ask;
Nay, an he would, it were no hopeless task
To gain a something more. But though he's brave,
He's far too proud to be a dangling slave;
And then - he's modest! So ... he will not come!
**

By the end we are certainly not hearing about fish anymore. I wonder about the accuracy of the sentiments, given this is a man writing in a woman's voice.  The carp of carps aside, I know nothing of suitors, having neither been among nor entertained them: still having squandered many hours in contemplation upon river and pond banks, all of these other characters among carp are perfectly familiar. The poem is an excellent piece of piscatorial observation.

Mr Dobson was surely a fisherman. Here's a fragment from An Autumn Idyll.

Hist! That's a pike. Look - nose against the river,
Gaunt as a wolf - the sly old privateer !
Enter a gudgeon. Snap, - a gulp, a shiver;
Exit the gudgeon. Let us anchor here.

The carp of carps among fish does indeed look shyly on in modesty, never coming forward to be caught. Last year I landed this immense fish.

While bringing it in, I thought I had finally hooked the carp of carps. Once upon the beach, unhooked and released, it became obvious that no caught fish is ever the carp of carps - by definition he is only ever the dim glimpse of a broad golden side, the colours of a tail at the surface seen for a moment and remembered forever, burning in memory. 

1984 trout from the kloofs

 
I was reminded of this set of photos by a post on Feathers and Fluoro - happy to see the stream is as yet unspoiled. Go there to see their pictures from 2014. Here are mine from 1984. If memory serves my brother and I were in Cape Town on vacation, which necessarily involved a couple of fishing trips. 

The first was to a reservoir high above Ceres. The water was low calm and clear, which gives one to think, as shown in the picture. Those scrubby bushes sticking out the water are proteas, providing shelter and refuge to the trout.

In those days we used to kill and eat the fish. It's a lot simpler ethically than catch-and-release, but of course unsustainable. I'm nearly sure I caught at least one of these fish that Charles is holding, which would have been a good trip for me.

We packed up some rudimentary supplies in grotty old haversacks and took to the hills. Short shorts were de rigeur in South Africa for manly men like us - good for breathability but not so much for sunburns. At this point we had not yet reached the swims, but I had fallen in at least once.

The first swim, a long dark pool below cliffs. The bag goes into a pack liner, thereby becoming a floatation device. There are fourteen or fifteen swims, though we only went up four or so. On another trip Charles dropped in to the canyon by going over a neighbouring peak, and came down the stream through all the swims. He neglected to obtain the required permit. About half-way down a mountaineering club trip overtook the fishermen: he was upbraided for their permitlessness by a pretty redhaired girl wearing nothing but a backpack.

It's surprisingly hard to swim while embracing a large green plastic bag.

Once above the swim, fishing improves noticeably, pretty plump brown trout to 14" in the clearest of waters. This one was released.

Other smaller fish became lunch by the stream, in that brilliant Cape light.

By the evening I'd fallen in multiple times. Here is a still life with fly boxes and other wet gear, and some toes. That rod is an 8' 5wt Fenwick HMG graphite, the best fly rod I have ever cast. Now it languishes in Perth surrounded by saltwater fishing that requires much heavier rods: like Borges' dagger in a drawer, dreaming of its bloody past.

 

The firepit for the evening takes less than a minute to construct. There are baboons in these kloofs, and their predator leopards. Sometimes in the dark there are green eyes at the edge of the light, embedded in shadows. The memory of golden Cape cobras swimming downstream past our wading legs, gives us unquiet dreams, sleeping as we are on the rocks. Snakes like warmth and we have the warmest bodies in this ravine. The water flows cold and companionable in the dark, its rills chuckling and purling around us.

Coming out of the mountains onto the Cape Flats there was a rare colourful sunset over the freeway. I did not know it then but that was the last time I would ever get above the first swim.