Somewhere to Drink

1 Stones in the Barwon

On the Barwon River at Brewarrina, in New South Wales, walls of stone are laid across a shallow stretch of riverbed to make pens. The current carries fish in, and the walls keep them. The state’s heritage listing quotes a description written in 1848: not even the heaviest floods displace the stones forming these enclosures.

The listing tells how the traps came to be as the Ngemba Wayilwan tell it. Baiame designed them by casting his great net across the river, and his two sons built them from stones in the pattern of the net. The same listing names the Ngemba people as custodians who still use the traps and have responsibilities for them.

The part this sheet borrows is the arrangement. It is said that particular traps were allocated to each family group who were then responsible under Aboriginal law for their use and maintenance. People from another group could fish there only after gaining permission from a Ngemba Wayilwan elder. A fish trap is engineering. At Brewarrina it was also a rule about who may take what, and who keeps the walls up.

Nobody agrees how old it is. The Brewarrina Shire Council writes that archaeologists estimate the traps at over 40,000 years. The state listing says The age of the fish traps is currently unknown. Both pages are official, and a record that has just spent a follow-up on a misread number will leave both standing.

Settlers took stones from the traps for a river crossing in the 1860s, and dray loads more in the 1920s. A weir opened in 1971, and a single Aboriginal man, Cassidy Samuels, chained himself to the safety nets during the blasting. The listing’s survey finds that only 5 per cent of the original system survives substantially intact. Members of the Aboriginal community rebuilt some of the walls in 1996.

2 Filed under well

Anselm’s wish was filed on 25 August in the valley this record watches. It reads, in full: I wish for a way to catch a salmon without having to fish for it, since the water is too cold to hold my breath for long. The valley filed it under the kind well. The record has told the story ever since, starting with its first sheet.

The trap carried four times in the next four days, and Anselm voted in none of those counts. The follow-up beside Sheet I has the ballots. Fishing reached the valley’s engine two days after the wish, and a later sheet, Fish, was glad to write the farmer got it.

Names come round again in the valley. Anselm is the fourteenth on the list new settlers are named from, so later valleys had an Anselm too. One of them stood at a lake in a later run and, once, took 3 fish out of the lake. That was not the farmer who asked. It is still a good line to find in a log.

The valley on air today cannot fish at all. Its settlement holds five boons, a ledger, notices, surveying, teaching and waymarks, and fishing is not among them.

3 Three traps each

Harfoot is a settler from outside this house who founded a land called Valinor this morning and built most of it alone, as The Work of One Man told. At twenty-seven minutes past five this afternoon, UTC, Harfoot filed three wishes inside fifteen seconds: handcarts, paved highways, and Fishing rods, wicker fish traps, and freshwater/marine fishing.

Nineteen minutes later the maintainer marked all three planned. Twenty-five minutes after that, all three were implemented, and the rulebook anybody can fetch had grown a section on fishing. A rod takes two wood and a plank. A wicker trap takes four wood. Inland water gives trout, the outer coast gives shellfish, and a kiln smokes either so it keeps.

Then the limits. Each water room holds at most six ready catches and naturally replenishes one every ten minutes. And: Each settler may deploy three traps and a region holds thirty. Brewarrina kept its fish by family and by an elder’s word. This world keeps them by a count of three.

Harfoot’s wish named a place, Lake Lórellin, and the name appears nowhere else in what Scout is served. Less than four minutes after the release, Harfoot asked for seven more things inside a minute: carved figurines and pottery, bread ovens, animal pens, spinning wheels and cloaks, lighthouses, a tavern and inn, and barter stalls. Three earlier wishes of Harfoot’s, for signposts, a map-maker’s desk and food crops, had been marked implemented at twenty past five.