Fishy Encounters

Sunday was the designated day to visit the fish feeding at high tide in the late afternoon. It was also one of my last “free” unscheduled days, so I decided to visit places that I’d missed.

I started with the Chinese Museum, which wasn’t open last time I visited Darwin, and had been on my “must see” list. It didn’t disappoint. More than twenty years ago, I worked with someone who was fourth generation Chinese from Darwin, so I knew a bit of the history, and that the Chinese had been in Darwin for almost as long as Europeans. Like in the southern states, when gold was found in the Northern Territory, Chinese were one of the many immigrants who flocked to the gold fields. Unlike the southern states, they weren’t persecuted. In all the gold fields, the Chinese tended to be well organised and to work in large groups rather than individually. They tended to be in worked out and poorer sections of the gold fields and to basically sift it through, getting any scrap that was left. They also set up market gardens, producing fresh vegetables in climates where food perished quickly. The main gold field in the Northern Territory was at Pine Creek, a fair way south of Darwin.

The Chinese set up market gardens in Darwin, provided a lot of labour and were a large part of the civilian population before WWII. Many women and children were evacuated south during the war, where they had a hard time fitting in. The men were also denied entry to Darwin itself. Despite having sixty-one separate Japanese air strikes, the civilian population of Darwin rapidly increased during the war, and, there were a lot of military personnel as well, so everyone was crammed into a very small number of houses. Possessions of the people who had been evacuated were looted, and the Chinese temple was destroyed. The lions were found in tenant creek, and most of the pewter vessels were badly damaged. The navy decided to build a base where the Chinese market gardens had been.

After the war, the Chinese temple was rebuilt. It was destroyed again in cyclone Tracey,and again rebuilt. Today, the Chinese community is still a large part of Darwin.

Later, I went to feed the fish. Many years ago I wanted to make a snakes and ladders quilt that included panels of the classic children’s outing for each capital in Australia. When I asked people I knew in Darwin what it would be there, their universal reply was feeding the fish. Since the 1950s, at the high tide nearest sunrise or sunset, people go to Doctors Gully to feed the fish. Many species turn up at each feeding time. The water is a swirling mass of fish.

After feeding the fish, I decided to visit the Mindil Beach sunset market. People who had been to the Thursday market a week ago told me that there wasn’t much there. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The enormous carpark was very full, there were four rows of market tents stretching out forever with an amazing variety of mainly food.

When I got to the beach, I found out why. The annual Beercan Regatta had just finished, and the boats were all around!