My first visit to Kingscliff was at Easter in 1955. I stayed with the family of my best friend from Murwillumbah, Mick Schields. They had rented a flat right on Cudgen Creek for a week or two. Murwillumbah people still called Kingscliff ‘Cudgen’ in those days.
The creek was a totally different ecosystem then. To begin with it was intermittently open and closed to the ocean; mostly open. It was very much open at Easter in 1955. In the eyes of a nine-year-old, the creek was then a formidable waterway. The reality is that it was considerably bigger than it is now. It was wider and when it was open, which was most of the time, the current was stronger. It was connected to, and supported, a great deal more wetlands than exist today. There was no bridge across the creek to restrict flow and change patterns of sand build-up. Construction of the approaches to the bridge had not yet destroyed very large areas of sandflats. The channels in the old creek were deeper and supported a great deal more submerged rocky habitat, including oyster beds with some exceptionally large oysters.
On the top of the night-time Easter full moon spring tides in 1955, the waves rolled across and into the mouth of the creek unencumbered from the south beach. They would crash against the wall on the northern bank sending salt water well onto the street just to the south of where the boat ramp is now. This wall had been paved years before. Erosion of the road resulting from waves rolling up the creek was a real threat in 1955.
On the bottom of the tide the creek would be several hundred yards longer as it meandered north, sometimes as far as the surf club, before spilling its load of clear but dark brown, tea-tree-stained water up the beach. I was to find out many years later what an attraction this tea-tree-coloured water was for many fish and in particular jewfish. Similar attraction occurred north of the mouth of Cudgera Creek at Hastings Point, about 10 kilometres to the south of Kingscliff. Which of the possible attractants—the colour of the water, its smell or its contents, including considerable quantities of juvenile prawns and fish—was primary, I was never able to ascertain. I had always assumed that for a combination of reasons it was just ‘very fishy water’. Jewfish certainly loved it.
In that week in 1955 Mick and I spent a great deal of our time fishing—in the creek, on the beach and on the rocks. Our main catches were in the creek. We were ‘experienced river fishermen’ from Murwillumbah but we knew little of beach and rock fishing. We used yabbies (nippers as they are now called) for bait and caught bream and luderick mainly, and a few flathead, but I particularly remember the numerous mud crabs we caught with a fish head on a handline, even in the daytime. There seemed to be mud crabs everywhere. I am unable to forget one of them in particular. I trod on it when I was walking in about 6 inches of water on my way to pump yabbies. The claw of the crab went right through the thick part of my heel, below the Achilles tendon fortunately. We had trouble prizing it free. I shed a few tears and limped for the rest of the day. But that was about it.
We went rock fishing a couple of times, but we were not equipped for it and we had no experience. But the occasions were memorable. This was what big boys did while children fished the creek. I was so inexperienced in rock fishing that on one occasion I lost half our stock of yabbies by leaving the bucket on a rock that was in the path of the incoming tide. Mick was not amused.
We only had the old-style ‘blunderbuss’ yabbie pumps in the good old days. Actually these were not pumps at all; they were ‘pulls’. They consisted of a 4–5-inch-diameter, yard-long tube of light metal, sealed on one end, except for two holes you could close off with your thumbs. You had to rock the tube down into the sand with no obstruction to the two holes, then seal them with your thumbs and by grasping on the two bits of pipe that were welded to the side of the cylinder, pull the tube and its contents of sand up and out. You then dived down and put your arm as far into the hole as you could, feel around for yabbies and catch as many of them as possible before they burrowed into the sides of the hole. It was extremely hard work. For a nine-year-old it was impossible to pull up the whole tube full of sand, but Mick was nearly eleven, so he bore the brunt of the hard labour. He was totally justified in being unimpressed when I was to lose half of his hard-earned bounty.
One of the features of pumping yabbies in Cudgen Creek right up to 1964 was the enormous number of very small (1–4 inches long) whiting that competed with you for the yabbies that swam away from the hole you had dug. There were so many that when they caught a yabbie they would form a cloud of activity as they competed for the carcass. They were so dense that when we threw the yabbie pump, sharp end first, at the boil, invariably at least two or three would be either stunned or chopped into pieces. We would pick up the spoils and use them for bait. The abundance of small whiting in the creek remained extremely high until the sand-mining companies mined the lower reaches of the creek in the mid-1960s (see image section, p. 2). This mining removed most of the sand spits that had supported them.
I remember little of the fishing Mick and I actually did off the rocks, except that we tried to fish the famous Alley, one of the prized fishing spots on the Kingscliff rocks. But I doubt we did much more than get snagged. I do remember that the area of rock exposed to be fished from was very substantial. I knew little of the wonders of intertidal ecosystems, as was proven by the loss of the bucket of yabbies, but I remember being impressed with the numbers of barnacles and ‘things’ that were attached to rocks or moved around the edges of them.
We also spent considerable time observing Mick’s father, Des, and several of his friends rock fishing off the famous Round Rock. I enjoyed this greatly and remember one or two scenes vividly. I obviously aspired to do it.
I well recall Round Rock being talked about with almost religious reverence, even at meal times. Was it sacred? It certainly was of heritage value to fishermen of that era. It was not only the place to fish, it was the place to be seen fishing. It was a social hub and the benchmark for good and aspiring fishermen.
To be truly accepted into the club that fished out the front of The Rock you had to be able to cast considerable distance with heavy sinkers. If you could not, then you should restrict your fishing to the northern side of the rocks in what was universally known as ‘No Hopers’. I was to appreciate No Hopers much more ten years or so later. I was to learn that it could be, in the right conditions, in contrast to its name, an outstanding place to fish. From my later experiences I learnt that when the sea was really rough it was a wonderful place to fish on the high tide for jewfish. The construction of the training walls at the mouth of the creek in the mid-1960s led to No Hopers being completely destroyed. It was permanently covered in sand and rock, but to this day I have never fished a better place for very big flathead. It was also the most reliable source of sand mullet I have ever encountered. This was to make it of exceptional importance to me for years as mullet of several species were to become my staple live bait for jewfish.
Des Schields and his friends were all very big casters. One or two of them had won national casting competitions. The whole gang, like the other top fishermen in this area at that time, fished almost exclusively with long, heavy, cane rods, 6-and-a-half-inch side-cast reels and 18- to 20-pound lines. Casting big distances was a necessity if you were to be regarded as a top Kingscliff fisherman. Very few of the acknowledged gun fishermen fished for bream or other small species for which light gear was appropriate. I doubt that many of them even owned a light rod. The notable outlier among the well-known good fishermen was Len Thompson. He was truly an exception. He was a champion light-gear and tailor fisherman, but he was a poor caster and he did not like using heavy rods and fishing with big sinkers. In fact, he would usually not even fish for tailor if the conditions demanded the use of even a moderate size sinker. I am confident he never fished Round Rock, certainly not when the local ‘gurus’ were in residence. And he was from Tweed Heads. He was certainly not regarded as a local. More of Len in chapter 16.
Mr Schields had rented a rowing boat for the week from Tom Charnock, one of the two commercial fishermen who netted the creek for a living up to the early 1950s. Tom had about ten boats that he had made himself, for hire. I remember crossing the creek with Des and his friends in one of these boats at low tide one morning when one of the group drew attention to the large number of big flathead marks in the sand. I well remember seeing more than a dozen really big flathead-shaped indentations, and we only looked in the immediate vicinity of where we pulled the boat up on the southern bank. These marks provoked considerable discussion about how big flathead could be caught at night with live poddy-mullet. But as far as I could ascertain none of them had ever done this, or indeed did afterwards. Flathead were not what real fishermen fished for. And fishing the creek was for kids anyway. As I was to subsequently learn their idea of fishing for flathead at night would not have been particularly successful anyway. At least not the way they would have done it.
I also remember how Des and his group would aggregate on Round Rock at first light and all fish, side by side, for tailor, until sun-up. About then they would make a minor adjustment in the terminal gear only. The 6/0 hook and short wire trace fixed with a ‘boot eye’, not a swivel, would be replaced by an even bigger sinker, down on the hook to maximise casting distance. This was necessary as with the minor gear change they switched from being tailor fishermen to being snapper fishermen.
Virtually all the highly regarded fishermen of that era regarded snapper as the loftiest target (chapter 18); catching one off the rocks was the ultimate fishing achievement. It would make a week’s holiday truly worthwhile. A fisherman seldom caught more than one in a day, or even a week, but miracles did happen. If they did, they were lauded.
Tailor were what were fished for most of the time and almost exclusively what were targeted at night. Jewfish were talked about and the capture of a big one, over 20 pounds, was a highly prized achievement. But it was not regarded with the same reverence as the landing of a big snapper. Snapper were something you fished for: jewfish were something you caught very occasionally while fishing for tailor, almost always at night. Very few fishermen deliberately fished for jewies. None that I was aware of regarded them as their primary target species. On the few occasions they did regard themselves as fishing for jewies, they still predominantly used baits and hooks that were more suitable for tailor (chapter 14).
All of Des’s group of fishermen used essentially the same gear, including what they called ‘4-ounce’ sinkers. It was a euphemism for big sinkers up to 6 ounces. But there was one popular pattern and size of sinker that did weigh about 4 ounces. Being able to cast them prodigious distances was a requirement of acceptance to the ‘Round Rock club’. And they were all good at it. As far as I could see, almost uniformly so. They were all certainly trying to throw as far as they could in exactly the same direction; over the base of the furthest intertidal rock in front of, and slightly to the right of, Round Rock (see image section, p. 1). Where their baits landed would not have been more than 10 yards apart. A 10-yard square might even have covered the lot. The only other place on the Kingscliff rocks where big casts could be a decided advantage was Snapper Hole, and the advantage there only materialised if you were fishing for snapper. The best water for bream and jewfish in Snapper Hole was in close to the rocks. And it was rare to catch a tailor in Snapper Hole.
I do not remember seeing a single snapper caught that week in 1955, but one morning I saw ‘Shorty’ Andrews—yes, he was smaller than the others—hook and lose two. He appeared to be the only one who had a bite. Was he a better caster than his larger colleagues?
It was common to lose a lot of the snapper you hooked off Round Rock in those days. Several factors contributed to this. The snapper there were always relatively big fish; in all the years I fished Round Rock the smallest snapper I ever saw caught was 7 pounds; the biggest over 18. More influential in the rate of loss in the good old days was that there was a great deal more rock protruding from the sand in front of Round Rock, all the way around to Mary’s Rock (see image section, p. 1). This landmark structure was just submerged at low tide in those days. It is now under the north wall, about 40 yards up the creek from its mouth. It was common, right up to the time the walls were built at the mouth of the creek, to make a really good cast off Round Rock only to take up the slack and realise you were snagged.
I also remember one of the rather meagre number of tailor Des caught that week being over 5 pounds. I was extremely impressed with this fish. But most notable from the historical perspective was the level of appreciation by the fishing assembly that was attached to the size of it. Obviously not many tailor of that size were caught at that time. This was before the introduction of garfish and pilchards as tailor bait. Most catches of tailor, and the bulk of the tailor in these catches, were not big in the 1950s. Some big tailor were caught, but large numbers of big tailor were not. Extremely few, if any, fishermen ventured out in the middle of the night to fish the run-out tide, when, as I was to discover a decade later, the biggest tailor, and the largest number of tailor, were to be caught. If they did, they did not have garfish or pilchards for bait. Three or four fish of about 3 pounds each was a good catch of tailor in the 1950s.
The small number of jewfish caught in those days was another feature of the times. I remember an encounter with Des Schields at least five years after my first Kingscliff experience. I listened enthralled as he recounted with considerable excitement and in great detail how he hooked, played and landed a ‘big’ 22-pound jewie from Round Rock. It was a rare event to catch a decent jewfish, even for one of the area’s better fishermen. This may well have been the first one Des had caught. It was also telling that a 22-pounder was considered a big jewie. Contrary to a prominent urban myth, catching a big jewfish was not something the average, or even the good, fisherman did often around Kingscliff in the 1950s.
I now have little doubt that catches of jewfish would have been different in the good old days had the locals known how best to fish for them. In 1955 the Kingscliff fishing community did not even know how to accumulate large catches of tailor; the effectiveness of garfish and pilchards for this purpose had not yet been realised in this part of the world. When I began seriously fishing for jewfish off the Kingscliff rocks five years later I had to overcome local myths and the advice I received emanating from their custodians. I was told in no uncertain terms that there was never a need to have a hook larger than 6/0, even if you were using live mullet for bait. If you were using live mullet, they had to be ‘bully mullet’ as this was what the jewfish were seen to be chasing. Sand mullet were obviously no good as there were heaps of them around but jewfish did not chase them! The contrasting habitat preferences and migratory behaviour of the two species had not had an influence on local folklore. Using whiting or luderick as live bait was not often talked about, let alone regularly put into practice. It was well known that jewfish would not take a tailor spinner; nobody had ever seen a jewie caught on one, so nobody in Kingscliff even thought about using a lure for jewfish.
It was to take me years to get over the prejudices I developed from this early misinformation. I strongly suspect that had the otherwise very good fishermen of the time known how to catch jewfish, this would have driven at least some alteration of the opinions of the relative merits of snapper and jewfish fishing.
I had only one more fishing venture at Kingscliff before my family moved there to live in 1958; that was for one afternoon in 1956. My recollection from this afternoon was strong because of all the times I went to the Kingscliff rocks in the next sixty years never did I see so much rock above the sand. I have vivid recall of a man spinning for tailor off a relatively isolated rock that was more than 6 feet above the sand; I had difficulty climbing up onto it when he had finished. I remember it so well because this was the first time I ever saw big tailor caught; they were 3 or 4 pounds each.
I was to find out later that the man in question was Trilly Harris, one of the area’s best fishermen. He and I were to fish together many times in the next decade. But what was of more significance to the comparison of fishing then and now was that this unusually prominent rock that he had been fishing off was about 50 yards south of the main rock mass. It only played a part in fishing in the general area every three or four years, when the water around the rocks was particularly deep. Almost 200 yards of this rock mass, and of course the high isolated rock itself, is now under more than 2 metres of sand. The location of this rock I believe is now about 50 yards south-west of the most southerly part of the carpark at the base of the wall on the south side of the creek mouth (see location 12 on p. 1 of the image section).