132 NEW SOUTH WALES 



they are able to shift from one spot to another without any picking up 

 of heavy kellicks or beating to windward, are able to count out more 

 fish on a fair day's " outing" than any of our professional fishing 

 crews. A thousand fish, we are informed, is not an extraordinary 

 catch for some of these clubs. While on the subject of fishing clubs we 

 may here mention that a very intelligent witness examined by the 

 Commission (Mr. M'Carthy) has informed us of the discovexy by him 

 of an extensive " shell bank," at a distance of about 10 miles eastward 

 of these Coogee grounds. This bank is said to carry only about 20 to 

 30 fathoms of water, and to be very narrow, in fact so narrow that the 

 steamer finds great difficulty in lying-to on it. The soundings in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the ridge, which extends in a N.W. and 

 S.E. direction for about a mile (so far as Mr. M'Carthy was able to trace 

 it), sj;ow from 70 to 90 fathoms, from which we are able to form some 

 idea of the character of this remarkable upheaval or submarine sand-ridge. 



Between Coogee and Cape Banks (the northern headland of Botany 

 Bay) the fishing-grounds are wholly confined to those in the ofiing, there 

 being no lagoons or inlets capable of being worked by nets. There are 

 about a dozen schnapper grounds within these limits, but none of them are 

 of much importance. Nannygey are often caught in quantities in the 

 depths off" Long Bay Head, and schnapper have at times been found to 

 abound off Marubera and Little Bay (wide) ; but until we reach the 

 long line of rocky ground which forms the submarine extension of Cape 

 Banks, none of the grounds hereabout possess the necessary conditions 

 for school fish. What fish there are do not seem to be settled on any 

 one ground, but, as is the case on all foul grounds, they roam from 

 patch to patch in small schools. The entrance to Botany is foul ground 

 as a rule, and although wide off Cape Banks there are some very fair 

 school-fish grounds, yet they have never been much appreciated by 

 fishermen, who prefer the " bumboras " and off" shore grounds to the 

 southward of Cape Solander, Long Nose, and Curranulla Head, 

 notwithstanding the strength of the southerly current in the summer 

 months which, off" some of these headlands, runs like a sluice. But 

 Botany, though never equal to the Long Reef and Broken Bay grounds 

 for school-fish, has always held its own for net-fish ; indeed it is doubtful 

 whether even Broken Bay, with its far greater extent of net grounds, 

 has ever been or is now more productive than are the beaches and flats 

 of Botany. This inlet, though shallow, covers many thousand acres of 

 water ; and as two salt-water rivers — George's and Cook's — flow into it, 

 there is no lack of .spawning or nursery grounds. Although of late 

 years as many as a dozen net boats have regularly plied the beaches and 

 flats of Broken Bay, yet fish are still caught. Of course the processes 

 of exhaustion common to all the grounds near Sydney have been iii 

 active operation at Botany, and especially that most destructive of all 

 forms of fishery the stake-net ; yet notwithstanding all this, Botany is 

 perhaps less impoverished considering the amount of fishing continually 

 going on than any inlet or harbour within fisherman's distance of 

 Sydney. But the evidence of witnesses well acquainted with the 

 resources of Botany leads immediately to the conclusion that, unless 

 arrested by legislative restraints, these prolific grounds will in a very 

 short time succumb to the stake-nets and the small mesh as surely as 

 our other fishing-grounds have succumbed. 



