Jim - Tasmanian Diaries

When I purchased a shack in 1978 at Miena, it was in the company of (and on the advice of) Noel Jetson from Cressy, who ran a small tackle shop there called Jet-Fly. Noel was the first trout guide in Tasmania. Noel had been very good to me and previously, on trips to Tasmania, friends and I stayed in some fairly basic accommodation at the back of his shop.

I bought the shack for the princely sum of $4000 from a nice old guy called Toby Walker and it was pretty basic. There was a shower cubicle where one stood on a wooden pallet and hoisted a four-gallon kerosene tin with a shower rose, filled with hot water from an emersion heater. You got a two-minute shower… and probably tinea from the damp boards!

Outside and about 30 metres away was a long drop that smelt appalling, with a swarm of blowflies in warm weather. For the shack’s water supply, a forty-four-gallon drum collected rain off the roof. Inside, there were four bunks with kapok mattresses, a stove, and a bar fridge.

A small kitchen table with a Laminex top was where memorable dinners were served, many stories were told, a few beers were drunk, and early diary entries were made.

This shack doesn’t sound like much, however, for a mainlander, it was much better than camping in Tasmania’s cold and often wet weather. I reckon I was one of the few mainlanders to purchase a shack in those days. They were hard to come by.

Noel encouraged me to keep a fishing diary from the day I moved in, and using an old leatherbound accountancy journal, I did. For forty-five years. Actually, it ended up being three diaries. A year or so ago, roughly the end of my serious angling days, I quit making entries. Fond memories remain of that first shack, replaced later by my present shack, which is still in use today and full of ‘mod cons’.

Recently, friends encouraged me to print out a few copies of the diaries, as they would like to look back at the halcyon days of Tasmania’s trout fishery. When I started the diaries, this was never my intention. One reason being, I was always insistent that my guests, in both the early and later shacks (a few doors apart), entered the day’s proceedings in the diary. So ‘my’ diaries actually have many authors.

I threatened a season ban from staying in the shack if guests didn’t make their diary entry! Only one forgot and when he asked, I informed him he couldn’t stay that year, but he would be welcome the next! He couldn’t believe I could be so harsh. However, in the early days, I was passionate about the diary. (He came for many years after that, and never again neglected to make his diary entry!)

In some ways, the diary is a bittersweet record. It notes mayfly hatches which have basically disappeared from some waters, with only a patchwork of remnant hatches today. The polaroiding on waters like Arthurs is no longer. An algal bloom, which began decades ago, has turned the lake a dull green colour and the fishing has deteriorated.

The Lagoon of Islands is long gone, drained to be returned to farmland. Meanwhile, the wonderful fishing at Lake Sorell ended over thirty years ago. The caravan and tent city there is no more, the gates locked and no one seemed to care. The Fisheries blokes have done their best by removing all the carp that infested the lake. But logging to the very shoreline didn’t help, nor the water demands of the modern-day circular irrigators downstream. Sorell was once a very special fishery; in my view, possibly the very best.

The Western Lakes are now more crowded, and on the Nineteen Lagoons under an azure blue-sky day, it is hard to find an area that doesn’t have other anglers on it. Meanwhile, some anglers today are not respectful of another angler’s water. So much of what we once had, has now passed into history.

As I write, the diaries will be printed in the next few weeks. They will recall some very special days of an era long gone on many waters. They will also serve future researchers and historians.

The diaries record accurately what was, and I’m grateful I pushed the buttons on myself and my ‘victims’ to record days both good and bad. Those who wrote in them would never have expected I would print them, and sometimes, I’ve been wracked with guilt in allowing them to be reproduced – warts and all.

On the other side of the argument, it would be a tragedy if only a single copy existed and this angling history, not to mention the social record (including the building of the two pubs in the highlands) was lost. Therefore, I’ve agreed with Mike Stevens to print 100 numbered copies, with all the proceeds going to the Australian Fly Fishing Museum in Tasmania. As I write, I’m told that copies are still available. They will come in two volumes, slip cased. I’ve paid for them to be printed. There will be a few extras, not numbered, for those who contributed to the project.

Another motivation to print the diaries, was in noting how valuable another historical work, ‘Record of the Fish Killed at the Great Lake in the 1890s’ has proved to be. Compiled from Tom Early’s diaries by Critchley Parker more than a century before, I’m informed only 25 copies exist. Others think there were more, but in any case, the last one sold at auction some thirty years ago.

Anyway, as I look back now as a feather duster in matters piscatorial, I wish I had kept diaries of my game-fishing for bluefin tuna down off Tasman Island. Or the giant black marlin captures off the number ten Ribbon Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef north of Cairns. And the very special yellowfin tuna fishing out of the small town of Bermagui on the south coast of NSW; a town Zane Grey made famous a few decades earlier. Only my slide collection will partially tell the story, and I rue the day I didn’t have the discipline to record all my flyfishing in Argentina, Norway, Sweden, Paraguay, Chile, Scotland, Iceland, Christmas Island, Belize and more.

When Albert Facey wrote his book, ‘A Fortunate Life’, he really did steal the title of my life as well. I’m now heading for 83 on my next birthday, and with a prostate problem the oncologist recently said I will probably die with, and not of. But it has curtailed the lively life I used to live. However, as I wander around like a half open penknife, I can only look back in serenity, as the glass of life for me was truly very full.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Jim Allen’s Tasmanian Shack Diaries 1979-2026 will come in 2 volumes in a board slipcase. They will be for sale for $500 plus postage. Until they are all sold, readers can secure a copy by emailing Mike Stevens at: fishingnews@gmail.com Please put ‘Jim Allen Diaries’ in the subject line of your email.

Please note: There will only ever be 100 copies for sale, plus a few publisher copies which will mostly be gifts.

As per above, Jim has donated the proceeds of the sale of all 100 books to the Australian Fly Fishing Museum, so all the funds raised will go to the Museum.