In another hour we are at our landing-place, a selector’s abandoned homestead, built of rough slabs, and standing about fifty yards back from the river and the narrow line of brown, winding beach.  The roof had long since fallen in, and the fences and outbuildings lay low, covered with vines and creepers.  The intense solitude of the place, the motionless forest of lofty grey-boled swamp gums that encompassed it on all sides but one, and the wide stretch of river before it were calculated to inspire melancholy in any one but an ardent fisherman.  Scarcely have we hauled our boat up on the sand, and deposited our provisions and water in the roofless house, when we hear a commotion in the river—­a swarm of fish called “tailer” are making havoc among a “school” of small mullet, many of which fling themselves out upon the sand.  Presently all is quiet again, and we get our lines ready.

For whiting and silvery bream rather fine lines are used, but we each have a heavy line for flathead, for these fish are caught in the tidal rivers on a sandy bottom up to three feet and four feet in length.  They are in colour, both on back and belly, much like a sole, of great width across the shoulders, and then taper away to a very fine tail.  The head is perfectly flat, very thin, and armed on each side with very sharp bones pointing tailward; a wound from one of these causes intense inflammation.  The fins are small—­so small as to appear almost rudimentary—­yet the fish swims, or rather darts, along the bottom with amazing rapidity.  They love to lie along the banks a few feet from the shore, where, concealed in the sand, they can dart out upon and seize their prey in their enormous “gripsack” mouths.  The approach of a boat or a person walking along the sand will cause them to at once speed like lightning into deep water, leaving behind them a wake of sand and mud which is washed off their backs in their flight.  Still, although not a pleasing fish to look at, the flathead is of a delicious and delicate flavour.  There are some variations in their shades of colour, from a pale, delicate grey to a very dark brown, according to their habitat, and, although most frequent in very shallow water, they are often caught in great quantities off the coast in from ten to fifteen fathoms of water.  Gut or wire snoodings are indispensable when fishing for flathead, else the fish invariably severs the line with his fine needle-pointed teeth, which are set very closely together.  Nothing comes amiss to them as food, but they have a great love for small mullet or whiting, or a piece of octopus tentacle.

Baiting our heavy lines with mullet—­two hooks with brass-wire snoods to each line—­we throw out about thirty yards, then, leaving two or three fathoms loose upon the shore, we each thrust a stick firmly into the sand, and take a turn of the line round it.  As the largest flathead invariably dart upon the bait, and then make a bolt with it, this plan is a good one to follow, unless, of course, they are biting freely; in that case the smaller lines for bream and whiting, &c., are hauled in, for there is more real sport in landing an 8-lb. flathead than there is in catching smaller fish, for he is very game, and fights fiercely for his life.