Salt Story by Sarah Drummond Page B

Senior was ready for him. The wily, one-armed fisherman watched from shore as the inspector waded out through the silty mud of the inlet and pulled up a whole cork line. No leads, no net, just a rope with corks attached.
    In the archives of the State Library, the enmity between these two men forever lies detailed in the annual Fisheries reports archives. ‘Salt Senior came in to pay his fishing licence today and threw five shillings on the counter. He said nothing and nor did I.’
    I feel very lucky to be witnessing the work of these briny dynasties firsthand. After unmeshing the fish and downing a breakfast of hot coffee and an apple, I drove the one hundred and fifty kilometres back to town and lugged the bins full of iced-down mullet onto the truck for Perth.
    â€˜It’s great at the depot,’ I told my dad. ‘You get to see all the other fishermen’s bins and check out who is catching what and how much.’
    Dad laughed. ‘You are beginning to sound like the rest of that bloody mob.’
    Jordie’s one of the two other fishers who have been working the Pallinup since May. He’s a tall, raw-boned man with a vulpine smile. ‘I’m nearly sick of the inlet, mate,’ he told Salt. He doesn’t normally say much. He blurted this out, a moment of odd candour for the quiet fisherman.
    â€˜Yeah, it gets like that towards the end of the season,’ said Salt.
    â€˜Do you get bored?’ I asked Jordie.
    â€˜Yep, after fixing nets or whatever, milling around all day, I’ll go for jaunts into the bush. But I never see anything worth shooting,’ he laughed.
    â€˜Have you been up through the valley?’ I asked. ‘Where the scarp is all hollowed out?’
    It’s ancient, high country swallowing down to the estuary. The sandbar at the east end stops the wild ocean from rushing in. You can understand how the land has changed just by looking at it. It’s the water, running down between the hills and loosening massive tracts of dirt into the sea. The place reminds me of Madura Pass, near the Nullarbor Plain, where you can see the edges of the world, the curve of the earth and the glacial pace of the friction between land and water. Eleven thousand years ago, the loss of country to the sea as she swelled and flooded the land marked the rise of weapon technology, changed clan boundaries from one season to the next and is remembered in the flood narratives of the Noongar. Maybe in the future, when it happens again, it will be a real estate issue. The mad, ultramarine blue of leschenaultia flowers against red spongolite, is a contrast to all this millennial longevity.
    â€˜I’ve tried but the midgies drove me back,’ said Jordie.
    â€˜Not enough bats around to eat all the midgies,’ said Salt.
    â€˜There’s been heaps of bats here in years past,’ agreed Jordie. ‘Now, no bats and shitloads of midgies.’
    Both fishermen nodded.
    These kinds of men have always intrigued me. My fascination is with their innately tough, strangely compassionate natures and their knowledge of natural history. People who fish for a living know more about their prey and their workplace than anyone. They learn by a lifetime of watching. Call it research with vested interest.
    Jordie’s camp is a tidy array of fish bins, iceboxes, a caravan and a clothesline with only his gloves and a towel slung there. He lives in town normally but, currently undergoing a divorce, he says, ‘I really live in the back of my car.’
    He fishes the inlet every night except Saturdays, heading out in the early evening to set nets near the mouth of the inlet. On our first day at Pallinup, Salt was throwing his hat and stamping on it. ‘He asked me where I wanted to set and I told him! And look! He’s fuckin’ settin’ there – right where I said I wanted to!’ Jordie had been setting in the same spot for months. It was just good manners