Meningie is a small town on the shore of Lake Albert, part of the Lower Lakes where the Murray River finally meets the sea in South Australia. It's also home to Glen Hill, a first-generation commercial fisherman with a reputation that has earned him a nickname: the Carp Whisperer.
Hill runs Coorong Wild Seafood, working solo from a 16-foot tinny he launches straight off the rocks or beach around town. He fishes for carp, an introduced species widely considered one of the most damaging in Australia's waterways, and he has become an environmental advocate along the way, learning constantly and sharing what he knows with others.
Photographer Drew, reporting for Australian Geographic while documenting the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Riverland, found Hill the most memorable of everyone he met on assignment. What struck him wasn't the fishing itself but the calm of it. Out on the water there was no rush; Hill simply read the surface, watched for movement, and seemed completely at home.
The detail that made the story was how Hill handled his catch. When a carp came into the boat he cradled it, massaging the fish in his hands. A strange tenderness, applied to a species usually discussed in terms of culls and eradication. The Murray-Darling Basin is normally talked about in huge, abstract terms - water policy, irrigation, agriculture, environmental decline. But from a small boat, watching a man gently hold a carp, the scale of it shrinks to something human.
For travellers, this is a good reminder that the Coorong and Lower Lakes are worth the detour from Adelaide's better-known coastal hits. This is where Australia's biggest river system empties into the Southern Ocean, a stretch of lagoons, sand dunes and birdlife that is culturally significant to the Ngarrindjeri people and rich with local food culture, including the famous Coorong mullet. Towns like Meningie and Goolwa make easy bases, and getting out on the water with a local operator is the best way to understand the place.
Stories like Hill's are also a window into how the river country is changing. Water management debates will keep playing out in headlines for years, but on the ground the region is carried by small operators - fishers, guides, campgrounds, bakeries - who know every bend of it. Spending a day or two there, eating locally caught fish and hearing how the lakes actually work, beats any policy paper.
If the idea of a quiet boat, a knowledgeable local and a landscape unlike anywhere else in South Australia appeals, put Meningie on the map. The fish might be an invasive pest, but the welcome is genuine.
Story via Australian Geographic.
