Welcome Ned Kelly

Look forward to chattin

Cheers

KW

LK

Might be a bit cramped

Cheers

KW

I can remember sitting on the bank of the river fishing with a hand line and using freshwater shrimp as bait these were easy to catch by using a container of any size with nail holes for drainage and a piece of soap non scented is best tied to the bottom inside the container and a piece of rope or bailing twine tied to the opened top of the container to pull it out of the water and waiting for the water to drain away to pick out the nearly clear shrimp and the fish loved them when you used them as bait.

Muscles as we called them which looked for all the world like a small clam and were found by pushing your hands into deep mud along the edges of billabongs or anabranches of the river untile you felt thier shape in the mud and added them to your bait stockpile some recon they were good eating as well although I have never tried them but they are top bait for the cod and yellowbelly.

We made our boats or canoes out of galvanised roofing iron generally knocked off of any run down or collapsed building and nailed or bolted to a keel generally cut from a handy willow tree and trimmed with a tommyhawk or wood axe "FOUND" on a handy woodheap somewhere the ends were then tank bolted together (remember the tankbolts) and then sealed with blackjack mostly removed from the tank repair stockpile in the shed and then we made our oars from more  willow branches with a piece of board wired to the end to make the paddle pretty basic and rough but we thought we were just it paddling up and down the river to our favorite fishing areas.

An old single shot 22 rabbit gun or a 410 shotty given to us by our dad after being taught the rules of using guns and we got that good with them that we could knock a wood duck out of the air 6 out of 10 shots and rabbits were sitting ducks to a kid that was looking for a feed or a few skins to pay for his ammo.
Most of us had 50 to 100 rabbit traps and in winter we would set them on the thousands of burrows and we were up and running our traps just before daylight to pick up our catch and gut them and get them to the front gate for the collector to take into the iceworks and dad would pick up out takings at the end of the week and we would pay our share of our board from that and pack away our few bob for christmas and birthday gifts and get our few lollies and go to the pitures now and then.
This was all done with frost everywhere and before we got ready for school.

We had great fun following the guys pushing and falling timber in the paddocks and we usually found something to catch or pull from downed trees young parrots or galahs (HEY I KNEW WE WOULD GET THEM INTO THIS AGAIN ) young pig suckers flying in and out of the timber you had to look out for mum and keep your eye on a handy tree to climb if she happened to get you in her sights and the suckers were used at home after putting them in the pigsty and raising them on scraps until they found thier way into the bacon stockpile

I think I should stop here and carry on a bit more later on
Anyway Cheers Furphy   

What?

Don't tell me you want to hear about the time my Dad had it all set up for my friends and I to go handlining for cod  in a lobster boat off the Maine coast.  In an hour he and my friends caught 100lbs of cod.  LK got two sand sharks and a sculpin.  LK cannot feel a fish on the line.

CJV, HELP!!!