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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