The Art of Living in Australia: Together with Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. Wicken

we have vast shoals of migratory fish visiting the coast at different periods of the year. During the winter season enormous numbers of herrings come to these shores, and are permitted to depart without any effort being made to capture them. Attention has been repeatedly called to this strange neglect in our fisheries, for this herring is plentiful and is considered to surpass the famous Scottish herring itself in flavour. The mackerel, too, is to be met with annually, generally about midwinter, in immense shoals, passing near the coast upwards in a northerly direction. The sea mullet also makes its appearance towards the end of the summer months, usually from April to June, at the very time when it is in splendid condition and full of roe. It is always observed to be proceeding towards the north in successive shoals and in great numbers. Many consider its richness and delicacy of flavour to be unequalled. The driftnet system of fishing would be well adapted for it--if the meshes were larger than those for the herring--as when fully grown it is nearly two feet in length. And lastly, it will only be necessary to speak of the "maray," which is practically the English pilchard. As with the fish just mentioned, it is met with about midwinter, passing up north in countless numbers, sometimes covering miles of sea. As the name implies, drift-nets are not worked from the shore, but they are "shot," as the saying is, in the open sea, and allowed to drift in whatever direction the tide may take them. Each drift-net will measure about 180 feet in length by about 30 feet in depth. They are secured to one another at the ends to form a long single line, perhaps two miles in length. By means of floats the nets hang perpendicularly in the water, thus forming a long wall against which the fish "strike," and get enmeshed by being caught in the gill opening. The nets are kept on the stretch by being "shot" in the face of the wind, and the vessel from which they are