The one that got away.

Hello dear friends, 

This is a fishing poem/yarn I wrote back in 2015, and the story behind it is very dear to my heart. 
Then I kinda just rant for a bit, with a couple of stories and some gentle bullshit. 

I deleted and re released this episode. I wasn’t happy with the sound quality so I’ve tried to make it a little better. I’m sorry, I’m still learning. The eternal DIY hack. 

Mick

☮️

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Oh hello. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back. I'm sitting out in the backyard again because I thought it sounded pretty good last week. Sounds sounded as good as I can make it sound anyway. I got this little two-channel mixer thing and a cool microphone, but I just record straight into my phone and I don't know, it doesn't sound mint, it doesn't sound super crispy. I can't get a real good silence in the background, even if I'm inside in a dead silent room, it's like noisy, you know what I mean? You listen to a good professional podcast, and it's I don't know, the sound quality is way out there. So I thought, oh, I'll just lean into it, and it's cool sitting out here in the backyard at night time. Um anyway, I'm gonna do a little bit differently tonight. I got a I got a poem I'd like to read to you. It's a bit of a special one to me. So I'm gonna read it out and then afterwards I'll tell you about it. And uh I've got another story actually I want to tell you too. Um so yeah, I wrote this about about it was 2015 actually. And it's pretty ok, pretty Aussie, which isn't 100% my style anymore. I guess it was back then. And it's pretty Northern Territory and fishing. Um if you're not into fishing, I don't know. You might enjoy it anyway. I hope you do. We'll give it a run. It's the old one that got away story. Fair income, mate. You should have seen her. I wouldn't lie to you. Gravel rash on her belly and a sunburnt back, eyes like fried eggs too. I heard the buff and seen the splash, had my arms near ripped from her shirt. The reel started screaming and line disappearin'. Oh hell she gave it some hurt. Well it started out as it normally does, head out before the sun, to beat the mobs of tourists to the ramp and be the first to launch and run. I pulled up at a likely looking snag, reached into the eski, threw a lure at the lonely stick, and tucked into a cold green can of brecky. The sun had only just got up when I thought I'd got a nudge. I worked that snag for quarter an hour, been one to hold a grudge. One last cast I gave myself, then reckoned I'd move on. I was barely ten yards from the boat when bang, it was on. Now, you normally try to play it cool when you hook up something big, but my heart was racing like my spool and panic was kicking in. I thought to myself, this thing's huge, and it fights like a bloody pig. Never in my life has a creature of the deep hit so hard or felt so big. As more of the braid departed my reel, I thought my rig's not built for this. I didn't know how right I was until I saw this fish. It seemed to happen in slow motion when it exploded clear of the water. My life flashed right before my eyes. I near filled my footage shorts. Can I trade this bait caster combo in for an electric winch? That fish were a meter fifty if it were a bloody inch. I started winding like a man possessed to take up all the slack. She disappeared into the murky depths and stole all that line back. Headed straight for the snags with a new barra classic and forty yards of my line, with the tiller in one hand and rod in the other. I think she pulled up in time. I gave a tug and started to whine and dared not draw a breath. But when that monster fish took flight again, I hung on in fear of death. I tightened up the drag a bit, hoping she was wearing out. But this wasn't Brofi's boxing tent. This was a twelve round bout. For near on half an hour I fought this fish from hell. Like a cowboy on old Roxalt, I was thinking, ring the bloody bell. Just when I thought I was nearing the end, she'd make another run. I tell you what, she had a big tank. It seemed like she was having fun. I was sweating buckets, my arms were burning too. I started to wonder if I was man enough to see the job right through. But I started smelling victory. I knew I had to win. I thought of the man from Snowy River. He never chucked it in. This fish will go down in history if only Banjo was still around. He'd pen a verse on this epic fight, the toughest pound for pound. I finally had this fish in reach, and I had her alongside the boat. Holy fuck, I whispered loud and paused to clear my throat. As carefully as I could, I reached for the landing net, but what happened in the next five seconds began a lifetime of regret. I'm still not really sure exactly what went wrong. A splash and a swirl and the line was slack, and uh she was gone. So there I sat in the morning build-up sun. I'd given my all to land that beast, and I was gutted, she had won. I slowly grabbed another can as tears welled up my eyes. I sat there for half an hour or more with nothing left inside. Now I know what you's a thinking. This bloke's talkin' rot. I can only wish that were the truth, but unfortunately it's not. She was the one that got away, and with her went my heart. My manhood left in tatters, so don't even bloody start. I can't tell you how big she was. I couldn't give a size. It wouldn't matter anyway. You'd just think I was telling lies. A head like a bull potty calf of a size I have no proof, but two scales off this Leviathan's back would shingle a shit house roof Well there you go. What do you reckon about that one? Pretty good, not bad for a young fella. Um yeah, like I said, I wrote that back in 2015 and I actually wrote it with old Pop, who I was telling you about in the last podcast, my grandfather, and we kind of wrote it together while Pop was in hospital, he was in palliative care and he was dying of cancer. Um I was fortunate enough to go down to Geelong where he was in hospital and I spent a few days with him, you know, in his last few weeks, it was really special time. And as I said, Pop was a great storyteller. He had oh my whole life. Everyone who ever met him just that's what they knew him for, just spinning yarns, that's what he did. And that poem is loosely based on a character who when Pop was a young fella, they his family had a big property down in Western Victoria, Coolow, I'll call it, as they did. Um and they had a a bloke working from there on the farm, Andy Gill. Uh, a name that won't mean much to anyone, but um Andy was a bit of a character, a bit of a celebrity in around that time in those parts. And him and a couple of other blokes, they went up for a bit of a holiday, a few days away, a week or so, fishing up on the Murray River. And um he was real excited about it, and they're all looking forward to it, and disappeared for a week up the Murray. I think they drank a lot of piss, I don't know how much fishing they did, but they came back with you know plenty of yarns and Andy apparently got onto this really big fish and had got away. He fought it for half an hour, he reckoned, and oh, biggest fish you ever seen. How big was it, Andy? I don't even know, I couldn't bloody tell you, but oh fight Jesus, and half an hour I was fighting it. How big do you reckon though? He's like, Oh mate, I don't know. It would a gravel rash on its belly in a sunburnt back, and eyes like fried eggs. Ah bullshit, Andy, it wasn't that big. Mate, two scales off its back would shingle a shit house roof, and that was sort of the punchline, that's what you know, uh a yarn pop heard in the 1940s, so I'm sure it's had plenty of time to grow in the meantime, but that was one I remembered as a kid, and um he told me that again while he was there in hospital, and I don't know, it just got my juices flowing a little bit, so him and me just come up with a bit of a yarn, and I'm Victorian originally, but at the time I'd been living up in Northern Territory, up in Darwin for a long time, and I'd never been fishing on the Murray, I was kind of a barrow fisherman up north, that was more my language, so I converted it to a bit of a Northern Territory tale, uh, and that's what came of it anyway. So it is really special to me. I wrote it with Pop and for Pop, I guess, and he got to hear it. You know, I finished it while I was down there and he loved it, he thought it was bloody great. And coincidentally, it's got played on. I've got to give a shout out to another podcast, which isn't around anymore, and it didn't start as a podcast, uh, through some of my mates. I met a few guys that had a fishing show on the ABC Radio up in Darwin every Saturday morning. It was called Tales from the Tinny, and it was very much an institution. Anyone officio from up that way will tell you fondly about it. Um anyhow, my mate encouraged me to send the poem to them, and I did, and I went into the ABC studio and I recorded it with them, and that was the first one of my poems that ever got published anywhere. The guys played it on the on the ABC, uh, which is a big deal. I was really rapped, and they loved it. I don't know, it's a good fishing yarn. So yeah, it is quite a special poem to me, sentimental, and I thought I'd share it with you guys. And there it is. So yeah, I'm sitting out in the backyard again recording for the the ambience. I haven't seen a Yao yet, still. Um I got a bit of love though from last week's episode, the last episode, for my international listeners, because I know I've got a few people from the States listening. A yeah, he's just like Bigfoot, Sasquatch, if you were a bit unsure about that. Like I said last time, I'm obsessed with that sort of stuff. Actually, that reminded me of another little story about old Pop too. When I was about 14 years old, uh, back down in Victoria, I lived in this tiny little sort of country town, half sort of nestled away in the bush there. I sort of inherited an old caravan and it was parked down at the river at the park there, the caravan park, and me and my mates would go and play up in there, just our little retreat away from home, I guess. And yeah, I was about 14 and had two mates with me, and we were camping down there, and we'd been up the street, and we're walking back down to the park to the caravan, and it was night time, like it was getting a bit later, 9 or 10 o'clock at night or something, and just the three of us walking along and pretty quiet in the town, and these great big tall gum trees sort of line the river, and oh it's a feature of the town, big tall red gums. And anyway, we were nearly there, like we could see the, we got into the park, we could see the caravan, and then just something out of nowhere, we'd never heard it before, I'd never experienced this roaring, screaming, snarling. I won't even try to do it, this animal, this beast from I didn't even wasn't even sure where it was coming from, whether it was in the trees or just out in the distance a bit, but it was really loud, it sounded close, and we were just terrified, like never heard anything like it before. And we were closer to the caravan than we were to back home, so we just bolted to the van and locked ourselves in and looked for weapons. We had nothing in there, probably steak knives or something like that, and we were shitting and we were baled up in there for probably an hour or so, it was epic, nearly in tears, like three 14-year-old high school kids, um, all tough and full of bravado until then, and yeah, like I said, we were probably there for an hour or so, and just what is it? What could that have been? And we were just running through all the worst case scenarios and monsters and Christ knows what. I don't even think I knew what a Yowie was back then, probably did, don't know. And I think after a while, like we were sort of still trying to listen out the window and we hadn't heard it for ages. And like, oh, we gotta we gotta bail, like we can't stay here. What is that? It was like I said, it was a tiny little town. There was no one else in the caravan park, it was just us. And it wasn't far from home, probably a kilometre. So I think after a while we we bailed, we got the courage up and sprinted a few hundred yards away from the van and got to the main road and thought, well, we're pretty much in the clear now, and we probably had a pretty brisk pace actually all the way till we got home. And Pop was the first one we ran into, and we told him about it all three of us at the same time, just spitting out what would happen and uh what we just went through and described it to him, and he started laughing and said it was a koala, and like I said, I I can't do the noise for you, I'm not gonna try and recreate that, but yeah, it was a koala roaring and screaming stuff. Anyone's ever heard that a male koala, I think it was like and um yeah, it was all just a bit of a laugh, really. It was nothing all that scary at all, but it was a bloody scary noise. If you've heard one, you'll understand. And since then, I went on to work in some a couple of zoos, and yeah, I've had lots of experience with koalas now. And I guess that's where the old drop bear tail comes from. It wasn't a bloody koala at all, it was a drop bear. Uh so yeah, there's another bit of a bit of a pop yarn for you, anyway. Bloody yowies, I don't know about that. But anyway, I'm sitting out in the backyard again. Um I might make it a thing. Record them out here. It is a bit of fun. Um good night for spinning the yarn, too. It's nearly a full moon, full moon tomorrow night, I reckon. Um clear sky though. It's a bit cool, little bit of a breeze. There's a few hoons around. Like I said, I live um on the sort of edge of the edge of town. Their suburb sort of stops here, but we're only about a kilometre or so from the highway. So cars get a little bit noisy on clear nights. I guess it's a good night for driving around in loud cars, going really fast too. 11:30 on a Monday night. But that's alright. I've built a bit of a hut out in the backyard. You can't see it. I'll throw some stuff up on Instagram, the Trapper's Hut. It's pretty cool. I'm gonna like make that my little outdoor storytelling base. I'll tell you more about that in the weeks to come. I bought a kerosene lantern too, looks really cool. I'll throw a photo up of that. Um just for you know, reminds me of the old days. Telling a few yarns by the kerosene lantern, it's pretty cool. I did want to tell a story actually, because it's uh state of origin time. I don't know if you watch the footy, the rugby league, or not, but this time of year it's state of origin time. Don't worry, I'm not gonna talk about the footy. I'm not super big into it. Um kids love it. And my partner, she digs it. I don't mind, it's alright. But she always seems to go down on state of origin night throughout my life anyway, for better or worse. Something always goes down on state of origin night. And this particular time, it was years ago, back in Darwin, we uh the power went out. I knocked off work, and like most of the city had lost its power for some reason. I can't remember why. So I got home and um kids were hot and hungry and grumpy, and their mum was getting a bit that way too because her kids were hot and hungry and grumpy and complaining, and she's like, Oh, I just can't deal with this. I've got to I'm just gonna go for a drive, give them some air con. I'm gonna get hungry jacks or something. And I was like, No worries, job's right. You go and do that, and I'll sort this out. So they left and I had a little generator, like a little one or two KVA generator, and I thought I'll set up a bit of a thing here, this will be good. So I spent an hour or so while they were gone, just running some leads, got the Jenny going, you know, got powered to the fridge, got some fans happening, some fairy lights outside, and we lived in this cool apartment in uh in an apartment building, had four different units in there, kind of like a duplex, a two-story duplex is probably a good way of describing it. But we were on the ground floor and had this yeah, this rad little courtyard out the back. Um so that's where I set up for the for the evening anyway. The kids and the girls get home and they're a bit happier now. They've had dinner and they're all sweet, and we're gonna settle in to watch the footy, and just as that sort of, you know, we're getting organized out, the power comes back on. I thought, alright, I just did all that for nothing, but it didn't matter, it was a bit of fun. So yeah, the night goes on, it's pretty good. And somewhere along the line, an hour, oh not that long later, we started smelling smoke, but it was really like plastic chemical sort of smell of smoke, and I thought, oh no, what's going on with the generator? And I went around and checked it, it was only a little quiet little thing, like it wasn't upsetting anybody and uh tucked away around the side of the house there. But it was fine, it was just purring away, doing its thing. Oh no, it even turned it off by that stage, so it wasn't even running at this stage, but I went and checked it anyway, and it was fine, nothing going on there. I went back around the back and it was getting stronger, like oh shit, something's burning. And we looked through the house, we couldn't figure it out and sort of looked at the unit above us, not directly above us, but the one on the other side. Noticed there was smoke coming out of. Their door. I thought, Jesus, something's burning up there. So I ran around the front and ran up the front stairs and I started racking on their door and no one's home. And I looked in, I could manage to see through their kitchen window at the front. They had one of those portable camping gas cookers, and it was sitting on the stove. So what had happened was they were cooking something and then the power went out. It was one of those um, I don't know what they're called, you know, like a glass cooktop induction cooker or whatever. Um, they had something cooking on there, then the power went out, so they couldn't cook anymore. And they're, oh shit. So they had one of those portable gas cookers, and they set it up and just sat it on top of the the stove, but they hadn't switched the bloody the element off after the power went out. They just didn't think to because it turned itself off. There was no power. They heated up their baby's bottle with the gas cooker and had the same thought that my partner had had. Oh, we'll just go for a drive, get some aircon. And yeah, they left the little gas cooker sitting on top of the stove while they were away. Bit later on, the power comes back on and the stove came back on and started cooking the gas cooker and it began to melt. And I seen that, so I started panicking like shit, they're not home. And I the solid door, I wasn't gonna bust it down. I went to their next door neighbour, like the one above us, and I was knocking on their door, and I thought, you've got to let me in. I've got to get around to the other to the other unit, there's gonna be a fire, and they were freaking out. They were an Indian family or something, they barely spoke English, and they were like, What's this guy wanting? He's trying to budge into our house. They let me in though, and I charged through to their balcony, and I couldn't climb around, it was too sketchy. So I raced back downstairs, ran into our backyard, and I jumped up on the fence that divides our yard from you know our next door neighbour and climbed up the. I don't know how I did it, like I don't think I would have been able to do it if I wasn't panicking so much. I just shimmied up the side of the building, up the drone pipe like Spider-Man. I jumped onto these guys' balcony, and their big glass door was open, but just the security door, that you know, that diamond mesh stuff, it was locked. And I felt I didn't have much of a choice. I just ripped at the door a couple of times and managed to just like tear it off its off its runners. It's just got those little plastic runners, and I got into their their kitchen, all the lights were on and everything, so it was just right there. I didn't have to go sort of searching through the house, just a small unit. I raced over to the stove, and this thing was melted like it. I swear it was only a minute or so from going up in flames, and the range hood was right above it, and they had other stuff on the bench like it was going to be a nasty fire. I sort of pushed it straight off the heat. I opened up their front door, unlocked their front door, I grabbed this cooker thing which was hot and launched it out into the car park, and it just yeah, it landed on the in the middle of the car park. Didn't hit anything, luckily. In the meantime, my wife had called the the fire brigade because smoke was fairly billow on out, like it was it was a battle getting inside this place, you know, it was full of smoke, it was pretty wild. Anyway, that's the story of how I saved our building from burning down, and always tell it, always say it to the kids, say it to anyone. Remember that time I saved the building from burning down? Oh yeah, Mick, we remember when you saved the building, and no one gives a shit. And I never got in the newspaper, and I never got on the news or anything like that. So I don't know, it's state of origin time, and I thought I'll just bloody tell you because you're my captive audience, and you didn't have a choice unless you turned off, now you heard it. That's the story of how I saved the building from burning down, and my little bit of filler because I didn't have a huge monologue ready for this week's podcast, which has pretty much come to an end, and I thank you all very much for hanging out with me again. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, give me a follow or a subscribe or however it looks on whichever platform you listen to this. Please share it with your friends, tell your friends, your family, show your mum, show your next door neighbor, show everyone. I really, really appreciate it. Follow me on Instagram, Mick Newton underscore storyteller, and follow me on my Facebook page, Mick Newton Storyteller. Uh I've got a bit of stuff on there too. I've got some poems and I've got a little bit of music, I think, and I've got some stories. I'm gonna upload a couple of videos there in the next week or so too. So definitely check that out. Um until then, you know, peace out. Tell everybody you love that you love them, that's very important. Go and talk to an old person. That's very important too. And you'll enjoy it and they'll enjoy it. They'll love spinning a yarn. Don't just go and have a small talk chat with them, get a yarn out of them, but get them telling stories about the old days because it's bloody worth its weight in gold. That's half the reason I do this podcast. Just to keep the stories alive. You'll you'll really love that, you won't regret that. Um other than that, be kind to everybody that you encounter and yeah, peace out. I'll see you next week. Ish with uh maybe a crocodile story, actually. Yeah, I think I might tell a crocodile story next week. I'll see you then.