Oyster Harbour is plentifully stocked with fish, but we were not successful with the hook, on account of the immense number of sharks that were constantly playing about the vessel.  A few fish were taken with the seine, which we hauled on the eastern side of the small central island.  At this place Captain Vancouver planted and stocked a garden with vegetables, no vestige of which now remained.  Boongaree speared a great many fish with his fiz-gig; one that he struck with the boat-hook on the shoals at the entrance of the Eastern River weighed twenty-two pounds and a half, and was three feet and a half long.  The mouths of all the creeks and inlets were planted with weirs, which the natives had constructed for the purpose of catching fish.  Mr. Roe, on his excursion round the harbour, counted eleven of these weirs on the flats and shoals between the two rivers, one of which was a hundred yards long, and projected forty yards, in a crescent-shape, towards the sea; they were formed by stones placed so close to each other as to prevent the escape, as the tide ebbed, of such fish as had passed over at high water.  This expedient is adopted in many parts of the continent; it was observed by Lieutenant Oxley, R.N., the surveyor-general of New South Wales, in his journey on the banks of the Lachlan River:  the same was also seen by me on several parts of the North-West Coast; and, from its being used on the South-East, South-West, and North-West Coasts, it may be concluded to be the practice throughout the country.

While waiting for an opportunity of leaving this harbour, Mr. Roe assisted me in making a survey of the entrance, in the hope of finding it more available for large ships; but in vain; for ships drawing more than twelve feet water cannot pass the bar.  The rise and fall of the tide is not only very inconsiderable, but also very irregular; under some circumstances we found that it rose three feet, but this was very unusual.

Our gentlemen made several excursions into the country in various directions, in the hope of meeting with natives, but not the least vestige of their immediate presence was found; they were not however far from us, for the smokes of their fires were seen every evening; probably the fear of punishment kept them away, as they had formerly made rather a mischievous attack upon some of the Emu’s crew.

No marks were left of the ship Elligood’s garden, which Captain Flinders found at the entrance of Oyster Harbour;* but a lapse of sixteen years will in this country create a complete revolution in vegetation; which is here so luxuriant and rapid that whole woods may have been burnt down by the natives, and grown again within that space of time; and it may be thus that the Elligood’s garden is now possessed by the less useful but more beautiful plants and shrubs of the country.

(Footnote.  Flinders Terra Australis volume 1 page 55.)