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pp. 56 and 57: A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney by Martin
Gayford, text © 2011 Martin Gayford. Printed by kind permission of Thames &
Hudson Ltd, London.
pp. 233, 236 and 237: ‘A kind of sharing’ from Keeping a Rendezvous © John
Berger 1992, and John Berger Estate.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Hole 1
Things Seen 21
My Life and the Frame 33
From the Deep, it Comes 67
The Tomb of Human Curiosity 85
Amateur Hour at the Broken Heart Welding Shop 115
The Boat Show 139
Night Fishing 151
The Nature of Words 175
The Butcher and the Housekeeper 195
The History of Lawn Mowing 199
Self-portraits 215
Bucket of Fish 243
Acknowledgements 247
lines, helped get fish off hooks and dealt with snags, though
we were taught to be self-sufficient. The many little bites kept
us busy, but if I did get tired there were always fish to play
with. I squeezed trumpeters to make them croak (gold-, brown-
and silver-striped, you caught them drifting over weed), and
in the bottom of the boat—in the gutter that held the bilge
water—I gave swimming lessons to little bream, steering them
up and down.
If it was windy we went instead to anchor in a bay back near
our wharf—Purple Pumpernickel Bay we called it, after an ugly
purple-painted steel yacht that was moored there. The water
was deep there, dropping off close to shore. Its brooding emerald
looked promising but it only ever delivered pesky babies.
In the afternoons, we seemed to be entirely free to go
wherever we pleased, unsupervised. We racketed around the
bush tracks or fished off the wharf while the dads took the
boat out again for adult fishing time in a deep, deep spot which
was hard to find (but when found was a piscatorial pot of gold);
a secret place of mystery and many stories that was called . . .
the Hole.
The Hole was situated quite nearby, and close to where
the estuary narrowed. The greater part of the estuary filled
and emptied through this neck, so the tidal forces were huge;
indeed, the area was and is ominously known as the Rip.
the water, and to the houses and jetties on the opposite shore,
which at that hour were gold-buttered.
The mothers did not seem to mind the wet sack on the floor,
and we exclaimed together at what came out: the impressive
ugliness of a dusky flathead; a snapper, its shining pink flanks
glorious with aqua speckles. We always hoped for a jewfish,
something to which Uncle Clive especially aspired but that
I never saw him get. The sort of jewfish he plotted for would
not fit in the sack.
At night, tucked in bed and daubed with calamine lotion,
we listened to the parents having a few beers in the kitchen and
playing cards; the cheerful noise of friends.
And then, not long after I turned eight, the news came that
it was over.
My Woy Woy bush, the hills, the sandstone rocks, that old
house, the green mysterious water. From all of that, I had been
cruelly separated.
I was quiet. Maybe incapable of speech. They had me
prisoner. Gazing out the car window I knew right then it would
never get any better. There was only one thing to do: wait it out.
It would take years.
Finally I grew up and, after detouring via Perth, was free at last
to return to the Brisbane Water. A bridge had gone up across
the Rip, but thanks to patches of national park the region hadn’t
changed too much. With increasing frequency I holidayed
within sight of the old house, in a hamlet on the estuary from
which the ocean could also be accessed. Double beauty.
Desperate to fish, I stalked the wharves and the beach to
cast my rod, with haphazard results. I could not bear to fish
beside other people and packed up the minute anyone came.
The mere presence of even the quietest of strangers would keep
me from the uninhibited level of concentration I needed if I was
to get the fullest experience. The other sort of experience—just
the doing, not the being—was, I thought, not worth having. In
peak times this could be a major problem. I didn’t have much
money and I had nowhere to keep a boat on a trailer. It was
frustrating. I could see Rileys Bay and all our old haunts.
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it on the drift into the bay, picking up the odd good thing and
a regular feed of whiting. The only limitation on me now was
the tide: to launch, to fish, to get back in, I had to have the right
water. There was no cow in the corner at Rileys anymore but the
bellbirds still tinked. Sometimes a sea eagle came out of the tall
timber to make regal circuits. And in the very early morning,
when everything was extremely still, fish jumped in front of the
mangroves. Along with the familiar there was always something
new to see. The green water slid on by.
I’d had the Squid for about eighteen months before my brother
and his grown-up son came for a visit from Melbourne and took
their first spin. The three of us had a great day drifting around
Rileys together and we even caught a squid, which was a first.
You never saw such an exquisite creature. The way its mantle
flushed with iridescent dots of pink and turquoise.
The next day my nephew left to fly off somewhere, so Rog
and I went out together. Here, at last, is where I get to the heart
of my story.
There were hardly any bites. It happens sometimes. I don’t know
why. Days when even the entertaining babies aren’t about, as if a
master switch has been flicked to Off. We tried different lines of
drift, different bait, anchored and put out lines for crabs—nothing.
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By then there wasn’t much left of the rising tide anyway; the few
fish that were about would only become more inactive as the water
slackened. So we picked up the anchor and for old times’ sake set
off on a tootle, steering through the same old oyster alley we used
to travel. The trespass signs had gone from the leases over the
years, though I can’t think why the imperative to shoot should have
lessened. Did oyster robbery go out of fashion as a crime?
We motored past our old wharf, looking up to where the house
used to be; in the mid-1990s it was sold and demolished. And
then, for fun, we anchored in Purple Pumpernickel Bay. I still
fished there occasionally if the wind was up in Rileys, but despite
the always-keen look of the water I’d never done any good. And
it was the same for us that day. It didn’t matter. We talked. I told
Rog about the time I’d been there the summer before. I must
be the only person in Australia, I said, who has had to move
their boat to a new spot because it was surrounded by labradors.
A pair of them had come charging down a private jetty and
thrown themselves off the end at full pelt. Making a beeline
for the Squid, they swam fast enough to create their own wakes,
then settled in to circle insanely around the boat. Around and
around they went, stupidly happy, and I worried they would tire
or blunder into the lines I had out, wrapping them around their
plunging paws. I don’t know what they wanted but they did not
return to shore until I motored away.
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