A cultural catch

It comes after NSW Police withdrew illegal abalone fishing charges against two Eurobodalla men in Batemans Bay Local Court last week after a four-day trial in which compelling evidence was heard on the importance of cultural fishing to Aboriginal people.

Wayne Carberry of Mogo and Kieron Stewart of Bodalla were two of five men who caught the attention of police and Department of Primary Industries  Fisheries officers when they were fishing in Dalmeny on May 2 last year.

The group was in possession of 50 abalone, a number consistent with a generally accepted state government policy which states Aboriginal people are allowed to take 10 abalone per person, per day. 

However, each man was charged with both taking and possessing more than the allowable limit of two.

Mr Carberry, who learnt to fish for abalone, or muttonfish, from his uncles when he was five or six, said the cousins were simply “fishing for a feed” for their families, as they had always done.

He said non-indigenous people did not often understand the tight-knit Aboriginal family unit, which included uncles, aunties, brothers and sisters as well as the extended family.

Mr Carberry’s mum makes a cracking muttonfish and vegetable curried soup, he said, which could feed at least eight or nine people.

While he concedes there are people who abuse the system, he says “there’s a good guy and there’s a bad guy everywhere”.

He wished Fisheries and police could show more respect for Aboriginal culture.

“Me and my cousins we go out to do what we love to do and we were harassed,” he said.

“Fisheries should be aware of our culture that still exists - it’s what we love to do, that’s who we are and we’re providing for our family.

“When they come there and harass us for us doing that, to us, that’s a sign of no respect.

“If you feel you’re being disrespected, in a way you lose all respect for law.”

Danny Chapman, who supported Mr Stewart and Mr Carberry in court last week, said muttonfish fishing was extremely important culturally.

He said Aboriginal people on the coast had been fishing for it “as long as we can remember”.

His own sons were prosecuted for abalone fishing – something which he taught them decades ago.

“These young men are going to jail for something that’s been taught to them,” Mr Chapman said.

“I wouldn’t have survived without having access to the ocean.

“My father worked in a sawmill, never made enough money for the six kids that we had, and the only way that he kept us alive was to go fishing.

“I brought my kids up the same way and they’re getting prosecuted for it.”

Mr Chapman is a member of the NSW Aboriginal Fishing Advisory Council to the state government.

He said abalone fishing only became a problem when the government changed the regulations in the mid-1980s when abalone became an expensive commodity.

Before that, no-one ate abalone, he said, other than the local Aboriginal and Chinese communities.

Solicitor Kathryn Ridgeway, who defended the men in court, says it is the most recent wave of dispossession.

“(On) the South Coast, north coast - all over NSW, Aboriginal people could fish relatively uninterrupted. Only when they stripped land of all their resources and the wealth of the land was starting to suffer did they turn their attention to the sea, and abalone was really one of the last commercial fisheries to go to a licensing regime,” Ms Ridge said.

“It is the most recent act of possession, and that’s why the Native Title case is so good because we’ve got people who in living memory have dived and fished and relied on that as part of their law and custom and it’s still a strong part of the tradition down here.

“Criminalising that conduct is really appalling in a social justice and a human rights sense. We well and truly know better.”