Bob's Fish Pictures

In 1841, Robert Neill, with a small group of Menang Noongar men, went fishing. We'll never know what went through the minds of the Menang when he asked them to bury the skins of the fish in the soft, damp sand. Hopefully they got a feed out of it.
Neill painted pen and ink watercolours of the fish they'd caught, using the preserved skins. 'The outline of nearly every specimen was taken from actual profile, by laying the fish upon the paper', he stated. (i)

He also painted specimens of snakes and one Antechinus that had been killed by a settler's cat. He sent these paintings and the preserved skins to Robert Brown, of the British Museum.
And there they have stayed for 160 years.


A few people have come across them. Geoff Swinney, a curator at the Scottish Museum found the skins in an unmarked collection box and wrote an article about it. (ii)

Bob found the fish pics after reading Edward Eyre's journals. There is a description of them in the Appendix.
"The appendix contains a letter written in 1840 by Robert Neill to Robert Brown of the British Museum and has scientific descriptions of 55 species of fish and 8 reptiles collected at King George sound. The descriptions include not just the scientific name but also the Noongar names of each species, as well as the sealers or settlers names of some species of fish." (iii)

How worlds collide. Settler, Latin, Noongar, Sealer.



No.16 Trachurus lutescens. Solander.
Native name - Warawite, Wadawick.
Yellow tail of the sealers.
Eye very large. Inhabits the edges of sandy banks. good eating. Caught by hook 5th. 1841. (March).




Corvina. Native name T'chark or T'chyark.
Kingfish of the sealers.
Teeth strong and sharp. Grows to a great size: as I am informed by the natives, that they often spear individuals weighing sixty or seventy pounds. This fish enters the fresh water periodically, like the salmon of Europe, and is the only fish of this country which I have distinctly made out to do so. It is tolerably good eating. The specimen was caught at the mouth of Oyster Harbour by a hook on the 30th. August 1841.
(Sounds like Mulloway to me.)

Bob contacted the museum. They offered to copy the pictures for a fee of fifty pounds a piece. Not to be stopped by mere cash flow dramas, he found a friend's son was in London at the time and organised for him to go in and photograph Robert Neill's paintings.
This is how you get to be looking at them, right now!

Bob then started harrying local departments to get the pictures published, along with some essays by local and international academics and Noongar elders. He felt passionately that this artistic and linguistic merging of cultures was a crucial key to understanding the community that existed here. The fledgling settlement on King George Sound was surrounded by fecund waters teeming with life - an outpost on the edge of the world for the Europeans and the centre of the known universe for Noongars.

This link will take you Bob's bloggy musings on life and some of his work with the fish pics. For those who knew him ... sorry, it's a bit hard ... but it's worth it.




No. 13 Upeneus.
Native Name - Miname or Knarnuck (the bearded).
Red Mullet of the settlers.

On a happier note, the fish above is one of my favourites, the goatfish, or red mullet. They are strong little fish with big, loose scales, a big character and come in a few different colourings, depending on where they live. They tend to hang out with King George Whiting.





No. 14 Apistes.
Native Name - Boora Pokey, or Poky.
Sergeant of the settlers. Apparently scaleless and without pectoral rays. does not correspond well with A. Marmoratus. Caught by seine 18th. March 1841. The fishermen dread wounds made by the species of this fish as they always fester.
Yep.




No. 43 Scorpis? Native Name Memon or Meemon.
Sweep of the sealers.
Teeth minute. It is a gross feeder and poor eating. Very common on rocky shores. Being a bold and voracious fish, it is easily speared or taken with a hook. The Aborigines usually select a rock which jutts out into the sea, and sitting on their hamms, beat crabs into fragments with a little stone and throw them into the sea to attract this fish. The instant a fish comes to feed on the bait, the native, whose spear is ready, suddenly darts it and rarely fails in bringing up the fish on its barbed point. Specimen caught by the hook 15th. June 1841.






No. 18 Crenilabrus?
Native Name Knelmich, miname or Minamen.
Common rock fish or parrot fish of the sealers.
Poor and soft. Inhabits bald rocky shores, where it is troublesome to the fisher by carrying off his bait. Caught by hook 3rd. May 1841.





No. 32 Carax micans.
Native Name Madawick.
Skip-Jack of the settlers.
Very common in shallow sandy bays, and forming the staple food of the natives, who assemble in fine calm days and drive shoals of fish into wiers that they have constructed of shrubs and branches of trees. Specimen caught by hook on 12th. May 1841.

There are more which I can put up later. I'd like to finish up with my favourite, favourite fish in the world. Yes! It's a mullet! Just read the rave Robert Neill does on mullet.



No. 57 Mugil.
Native Name Merrong or Mirrong.
Flat-nosed mullet of the settlers.
This is the finest fish of New Holland that I am aquainted with. In Wilson's Inlet about forty miles west of King George's Sound, it abounds in the winter months: and the different tribes from all parts of the coast, assemble there by invitation of the proprietors of the ground, (the Murrymin) who make great feasts on that occasion. the fish attains a weight of three and a half pounds and a fat one yields about three quarters of a pound of oil.

He knows a good, honest fish when he sees one.



(i). Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. http://www.daao.org.au/main/read/4726
(ii)Swinney, G. N. Some Richardson type specimens in a collection of Australian fishes, with notes on their collector Robert Neill. Anh 11 (1): 17–25 (October 1982
(iii) Bob Howard, Proposal to Publish Robert Neill's Lithographs.
Pictures Courtesy of the British Museum of Natural History.
Brown italics are the descriptions by R. Neill in the appendix to Eyre's journal.