Fishing the Georges River: Cultural Diversity and Urban Environments

Abstract

Fishing is the most popular recreation in Australia but there are many different ways in which Australians have fished. Here are just a few extracts from interviews with people who live near and use the Georges River, a large tidal river in Sydney’s suburban south-west.1 They suggest the diverse skills and knowledge on the river, but also the currents of emotion, fear and politics which swirl around everyday fishing: Mahmoud lives in Bankstown but his family came from Syria: …we use a traditional Syrian or Lebanese rod where there’s no reels. It’s about a metre long and it’s telescopic … so it comes out to some six metres and then from the end tip, a fishing line is just tied to the top and then you put a sinker, a float and then another line down with the hook. KeywordsUrban EnvironmentCultural DiversityRecreational FishingInal InterestVietnamese CommunityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.