Hooked on a classic

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This was published 12 years ago

Hooked on a classic

Alluring ... Croajingolong National Park.

Alluring ... Croajingolong National Park.

With guidebook in hand, Ian Sutherland returns to a place of fishing legend.

Croajingolong. The name has a ripple and a ring to it, like a bell miner's chime, like dark water running over rock, like the crack of a whipbird in the forest.

I first wanted to go to Croajingolong before it was even called Croajingolong. A black-and-white photo in my boyhood bible, Fishing the Victorian Coastline, shows a VW Kombi parked beside an inlet with fibreglass rod propped up beside it; the caption underneath reads "The Mueller River — where you can fish almost from your car". The author Ken Knox described the river as the most prolific fishing area in Victoria and his diary entry from March 1973 tells of catching 50 fish — 30 bream, 10 trevally and 10 mullet — in two hours of fishing.

In 1979, the Mueller River and several small parks were incorporated into the new Croajingolong National Park, which now covers 100 kilometres of Victorian coast and hinterland in east Gippsland from Sydenham Inlet to the NSW border. It took me 30 years to get to Croajingolong and to fish in the Mueller River; now I am back for the second time in two years to spend a few days camping and fishing with my son, Finn, who is also clocking up some kilometres for his learner-permit logbook.

The forest is thick and the wildflowers profuse and colourful beside the road in from Cann River. A metre-long goanna picks itself up from a sunny patch of bitumen and saunters into the bush. We stop and get out of the car; the big lizard allows us to approach almost within touching distance before it turns and, hissing, scuttles up a tree.

Mahogany gums shade the camping ground at Peach Tree Creek Reserve beside Tamboon Inlet. White-barked melaleucas mark the shores of the inlet, wide with sandy bars and islands separated by deeper channels. We head down to the water with our rods and lures hoping to pick up a flathead, for which the inlet is renowned. Wading knee-deep, several stingray-shaped imprints in the silty bottom make me nervous, more so when I see a muddy swirl as something large departs for deeper water. That evening after dark we wade again, this time equipped with a waterproof prawning light. No prawns. But we see many tiny flounder, a few small bream, several large eels gliding into the shadows and a few flathead-shaped imprints in the sand where the fish have lain in wait for prey. A neighbouring camper who has been out spotlighting in his kayak tells us he has seen several large flathead - one as long as his arm - and many tiny prawns in the deeper water.

The birdsong is rich and varied as we wake next morning. We collect saltwater yabbies from the mudflats with a bait pump and soon catch a few undersize bream. Finn lands a good one, which we despatch for our dinner.

That afternoon we pack up and head off for the Mueller, smaller than Tamboon Inlet but wild and just as beautiful. We fish into the evening; perhaps there are fewer fish than in the 1970s, perhaps it is a quiet day: we catch one undersize bream. We camp that night at Thurra River nestled among the tea-tree and cook the bream.

The morning dawns clear and bright and the river runs past shallow and tea-stained. The surf beach is just a few minutes' walk through the tea-tree. We crest the dunes and the ocean and horizon spread in front of us. The water is green as a cat's eye marked with white, deep close to shore. At one end of the beach, the Point Hicks lighthouse stands on the cape as if scanning the horizon; at the other end, the Thurra River spills its darkened waters into the sea.

Finn and I set up our surf rods and gear. According to my boyhood bible, the beach is good for salmon, tailor and gummy sharks but as grey clouds build before a storm, the only creatures to take our baits are sand crabs. The fishing may not be what it was in Knox's day - or perhaps we are not the fishermen that Ken Knox was - but the wildlife and wild beauty of Croajingolong remain as alluring as the fishing.

Cann River is 450 kilometres east of Melbourne via the Princes Highway. Turn off down Tamboon Road at Cann River for Thurra River and Mueller Inlet campsites, which are near the end of Point Hicks Road, and for Peach Tree Creek Reserve, which is at the end of Fishermans Track. Thurra River has 46 sites, Mueller River eight sites, Peach Tree Creek 11 sites. There are also campsites at Wingan Inlet and Shipwreck Creek, which are accessible from further east along the Princes Highway towards Mallacoota. See parkweb.vic.gov.au.

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