Sunday, April 29, 2007







Fishing in the creek: There was always a great sense of wonder and excitement for me personally ….. fishing off the middle rocks between the upper and lower pools ….. for catfish, eels and especially mudgudgeons ….. small fish of maximum length of 175 mm ….. a monster at that length ….. I would catch them on a short bit of line tied to a straight willowy tree branch with a small hook and sinker and a cork float ….. you could see them from 3.00 metres on the tan coloured river gravel on the pool bottom in the clear water …. a tin of worms could be obtained by turning over Mum’s garden edging stones and finding them underneath in the moist red – brown soil ….. worms which were thick and lively attracted the mudgudgeons with their twisting movement on the hook …. I would take my small catch proudly up to the house and I would get one of Mum’s Vacola bottling lids on the slow combustion wood stove and cook my catch of fish in the 100 mm wide lid.

One big mudgudgeon I kept for about a year in a cut down old concrete wash tub near the tap near the upper laundry shed …. I turned it into an aquarium with 50 mm of clean river gravel in the bottom and a small blue flowering water lily obtained from way across on Watson’s land from the billabong on the edge of the big Wilsons Creek Dam ……. I used to feed it with worms everyday …. Eventually the fish would rise up and take worms from my fingers 20 mm out of the water.

We didn’t eat catfish as they didn’t have scales as per the Biblical injunction in the Old Testament ….. I often gave these away to the Graham’s, the neighbours on the adjacent property next door.

Fishing in the creek: See picture above. In 1992, Peter and Brett Aitken (Gerald’s boys) were fishing on one of there infrequent family holiday visits to Wilsons Creek from Adelaide. Peter caught an eel eventually.

Skin Diving in the creek: I made my first underwater mask out of a section of inner tyre tube stretched over a small face – sized frame from a cut down wooden lid of a banana crate which enclosed a single glass from a disused torch ………. Sealed with tar obtained from spent batteries from the old style of valve radios ….. I eventuated graduated to my first store-bought mask which fitted more snugly in waterproof manner …….. I remember swimming up the top rapid shallows ….. the clear tumbling and eddying water among the rocks …… seeing the beautiful minnows cavorting in a school of glimmering gold with a stripe of crimson on their sides.

Skin Diving in the creek: I made my first underwater mask out of a section of inner tyre tube stretched over a small face – sized frame from a cut down wooden lid of a banana crate which enclosed a single glass from a disused torch ………. Sealed with tar obtained from spent batteries from the old style of valve radios ….. I eventuated graduated to my first store-bought mask which fitted more snugly in waterproof manner …….. I remember swimming up the top rapid shallows ….. the clear tumbling and eddying water among the rocks …… seeing the beautiful minnows cavorting in a school of glimmering gold with a stripe of crimson on their sides.

Pool 2 = Lower Pool: …… we rarely swam in this pool as it didn’t have a very good entry point into the water as kids ….. was suddenly up to 2.00 m deep at the top end when it flowed over the top rock shelves then eventually got to 1.5 m then into underwater boulders at the far end at 100 + metres.

Description: a dark green rainforest pool overhung on the north-eastern side by 50 metre high brush box trees …… smooth tan trunks spreading into elongated branches ending in bunches of very dark green lanceolate leaves ……. Small white flowers eventually retracting into dark brown cupped seed capsules ….. bark is tan coloured with smooth but fibrous texture …… A steep 45 degree bank of red soil ….. descends to the edges of the pool …. Interspersed with large rainforest trees and occasional tall thin trunked Leichhardt’s Treeferns …. Elegant black trunks with an expanding whorl of 2.0 m long fronds …. bright summer sunlight broken up into shafts of golden light in amongst the tree canopy ….. they strike the glass – like water in bright shafts of liquid gold probing the green depths amongst boulders and the occasional sunken log … the shafts of light give way to solid shadows of rainforest green in the depths hiding the big 2.00 m long eel … the light in other areas searching the washed tan – brown – cream river gravel creek bottom where the 400 mm long catfish has made it’s concentric ringed nest of graded gravel ….. the centre is a coarse gravel gives way to ripples of lighter gravel ….. the dark shape of the catfish gracefully glides out over the pool depths and slowly circulates over the ringed shapes …… the centre of the rings is where the eggs have been laid.

On the south western side of the pool is a blue quandong tree (Eleocarpus grandis) ….. now grown to 100 metres high in 2005 ….. it had grown from a ten metre high tree in the 1970’s ….. a very fast growing tree with light fawn bark in splotches of darker browns merging with lighter browns …. 150 mm thick branches are splayed outwards in radiating pattern of ten metre long limbs …. Branches end in bunches of dark lanceolate leaves with serrated edges ….. in the right season, the tree has 30 mm. green globular fruit which eventually turned dark blue …. the leaves were a mixture of dark red and others being dark green …. These trees are frequent creekside trees and when the fruit falls into the creek or eaten by birds, the flesh rots off to leave a 20 mm wavy crenulated woody seed which gets washed down the creek with the river gravel in floodtime …. this often sprouts by the creek into a new tree to form fringing rainforest along the creek.

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Verbal Description …. A Journalling Experience of the Creek ... 2001:


….. I am sitting between the upper and lower pools …. The upper pool is a still pool with slight ripples on the surface from the incoming water from the rapids on the topside of the pool … there are shadowed shades of water ….. dark green with streaked patches of lighter light-lit water ….. tiny white froth flecks moving gently down on the smooth water surface …… the pool is edged with tall trees 50 metres or so high …… some of them are water gums as in the photographs below.

…. There are various assorted rainforest trees with small subdivided dark leaves in loose clumps on the edge of stretching thin branches …… trees overhang the pool now ….. in past years it was more open and sunny …… A Bangalow Palm to 3.00 metres high grows upwards as dark green graceful palm fronds from beyond the boulder

On the right hand side is a bouldery slope of small boulders ….. 200 – 300 mm in diameter ….. the boulders are mainly 100 mm in size and traverse down the slope ….. some of the boulders are covered in pads of moist green moss ….. exposed 100 mm tree roots mingle with the boulders …… a large 600 mm rainforest tree butt ends the sloped shoulder.

Through the creek bush comes repeated bird sounds (currawongs) the sounds cascade down among the forest trees …… bird sounds, the gentle sounds of moving water and the soft sounds of moving leaves in the occasional breeze interweave together through the rich greenness.

The upper end of the pool is backed by a watergum forest in trim 100 - 200 mm cream – fawn smooth trunks …. Often in multiples of two or three trunks arising next to each other ….. occasional trunks marked out in smooth cream bark but other trunks in darker bark …… lomandra sedges in dark green blades …. Tussocky at the base near the waters edge ….. soft filtered light alights on the dark green leaves alternatively with dark then light green leaves.

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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Wilsons Creek















Natural geographical features of the locality


One of the main features of the site was the creek ….. it was a series of large pools up to fifty metres across, rapids and boulders edged by glass clear waters with darker shadows streaked with lighter translucent sun shafts falling through the edging trees in lighter colours. Water from the top rapids flowed into the first main pool which was our swimming pool which then flowed over tan-coloured rock shelves …… to flow into a deeper dark green pool below which was a much longer pool.

In these pools we went fishing and swimming as kids:

Left hand side of the creek: Was where we entered the water ….. the bank sloped down to soft tan – brown river gravel then into shallow water …… this was where the creek flowed slowly around the outside southern edge of the pool … sand and gravel partly covered by organic matter ….. fallen leaves are 200 – 300 mm deep … water is 500 mm deep here ….. whenever you walk here, it releases clouds of gas bubbles ….. one day in the early 1960’s with my chemistry set and books, I leant this was marsh gas or methane gas which was being released from the decomposing leaves …. The gas was trapped in the gravel and mud and was released when the surface of the gravel was broken.

I caught some of this gas in an inverted waterfilled glass jar where the bubbles arose and displaced the water ….. I put a lid on the jar and took it back to my chemistry set ….. I lit the gas and it burned with a slow blue flame like methylated spirits ….. so I knew it methane being released from the decomposing leaves.

Floods and cyclones: which came nearly every year in the 1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s ….. swirling air would form into a low pressure system over a whole region and would initially gather up in the Coral Sea up north …… forming into a rain depression or cyclone which would rotate clockwise to pass moisture laden air onto the coast from off the sea …… then it moved progressively down the coast to cross our section of the coast in the eye of the cyclone …. This meant the eye of the cyclone was only moving dry air off the land into itself which swirled around to become moisture laden air directed onto the coast from off the sea …. then the eye had crossed over that was the end of the cyclone.

When I was home in the 1950’s and the 1960’s I remember some of these things:

  • How the rain and wind lashed around the eaves

  • How I often played dams and paddle wheels made out of empty wooden cotton reels in the grass drain which cut across the hill behind the shed

  • The tossing waves of the swollen creek

  • The flying fox over the creek at the engine room to get to Mullumbimby High School (1961 - 1967)
  • Dad put in two stout posts on either side of the creek with a double banana wire between them ….. the whole family would jump on separate pulleys and pull ourselves across to the other side ….. Each pulley had a short rope and thick stick between your legs … I remember my feet barely a metre off the tossing brown water as I pulled myself over on the pulley,…. I walked with my two of my brothers up to Wilsons Creek Rd. to catch the High School bus into Mullumbimby ….. then doing the same in the afternoon after school.

    When a cyclone was coming down the coast and creek had come up, the flying fox enabled us freedom of movement in a cyclone …... Dad would drive the vehicle across to the other side of the creek and leave it there …... We could always go as a family into town or church when the weather was bad and creek was up.


We would hear on the radio the progression of the cyclone down the coast and when it was expected to cross our section of coast. The creek would be transformed overnight into a huge tossing and surging sea of muddy water filling the whole creek to a depth of ten to twenty metres …… the rain just poured down day after day till the eye of the cyclone passed on and out to sea.

When the rain had stopped, we would troop as a family down the creek to see how high the creek came up in the middle of the night as invariably the eye of the cyclone had passed over in the middle of the night ….. it could come up around ten to twenty metres in height. We would then often go down the engine room to see if the flood waters had come up anywhere near the engine room at the crossing …. It had been very high if had come up to there.

Description of the creek: our section of the creek consisted alternating variations in the creek:

  • The top pool which was our swimming hole as it had a gravelly sloping bottom going over to a two metre deep rocky bottom with a 250 mm underwater rock we could all swim to. The pool was about 30 metres across by 75 metres long
  • Then a narrow constricted passage which glided over a 300 mm deep rock shelf top flow into a lower large pool … about 75 metres across by 200 metres long
  • Then there was a series of large bouldery rapids for another 200 metres
  • Then there was Pool 3= Lower Pool. It was about 50 metres across by 75 metres long …… we rarely swam in here as there was not a good entry to the pool plus it was an uneven depth that was green and mysterious. I only fished here as it was good for catfish.
  • Then there was a series of large bouldery rapids again for another 200 metres down the concrete creek crossing which Dad built in the early 1960’s

    For me I was constantly exploring right down and above our section of creek. Virtually every tree grove, pool and boulder has some memory for me. I was out at the old property meeting the new people in 2001 and 2006 as the farm had been sold in 1995.

    Pool 1: The top pool ran from a sloping gravelly bottom on the left hand side of the creek and sloped over to a 1.50 metre high rocky boulder wall. This then fell a further two metres to a rocky bottom below. A 250 mm deep underwater rock shelf projected out from this wall. The photograph above shows the surrounding rainforest trees.
    ubmerged Boulders

    Pool 1: Photograph above shows the 1.50 metre high rocky boulder wall on the far side of the pool. This wall sloped down two metres to a rocky bottom with a 250 mm underwater rock shelf we swam to.

    The series of large bouldery rapids from Pool 3 for 200 metres down the concrete creek crossing which Dad built in the early 1960’.

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    Personal Experiences of the locality:
  • Flying Fox Wire across Pool 1 as well … was for getting to the house if the creek was in flood ….. one day Dad and Gerald coming down a pulley and just missing the floodwaters. See the photograph of Helene Aitken (nee Jenkins) before she married Gerald Aitken, my brother in 1973. ….. going over on the wire in a flooded creek time at the swimming pool
  • The other flying fox wire was right down the creek further at the crossing and engine room area of the creek.
  • Swimming in the creek: as a family at the end of hot summer days ..… we used to leave our wet clothes to dry on the clumps of reeds ….. swimming with my brothers in our later years in Pool 1.
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