Unsung icons: Aquariums A fishy tale from David Smiedt

COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE

Here’s something that may astound our younger readers – bless your millennial socks. For decades, most Australian homes had but one screen in them and that was the telly. The idea that you could have a computer in your room, let alone on your lap, or a telephone that you’d prefer to send messages on rather than talk, was utterly fanciful. If you wanted to escape into another visual world, the choices were magazines (yay!) or whatever your olds decreed was going to be on the box that night.

Then, along came aquariums – universes unto themselves that could sit neatly on a child or teenager’s desk. The most basic of these housed a goldfish or two, or, if you had a bit more cash, a belligerent Siamese fighting fish, which was so aggressive it would flamboyantly charge its own reflection. All you needed was a glass vase or bowl that had fallen from fashion, a couple of dollars’ worth of pellets and a flushable toilet in case things went south. Many a funeral took place beside the Fowler Vitreous – before we knew this was actually an environmental no-no.

Because goldfish were so cheap, you often had a bit of pocket money left over to spend on tank decoration: this could be marbles, stones or plants that ran the whole gamut from natural to as fake as a $20 Gucci anything. If the bug bit (and for many of us it did so hard it practically left teeth marks), we graduated from spare glassware on to rectangular purpose-designed tanks that were roughly, at a minimum, the size of today’s desktop printers. They came with filters that became encrusted with slime and made you gag when you cleaned them – once in the kitchen sink and then forever outside. They were also often equipped with a game-changing water heater that opened up the universe of tropical fish. As beguiling as goldies were, they simply didn’t hold a piscine candle to the neon tetras, tiger barbs and guppies whose bodies looked like peripatetic Dali canvases in miniature.

Fish tanks gave three things to many young Australians: the first, a sense of responsibility – a literal dip in the water of pet ownership from parents unconvinced as to whether you could be trusted with a quadruped. The second was an entirely new world of the kind of obsessive nerdery kids adore, one that necessitated its very own vocab. When else could you use the word ‘gourami’ in a sentence? The third factor was that it was the only part of the house you could decorate however you wanted. Budget permitting, it was an aqueous state where you, alone, were aesthetic emperor.

Glittering ichthys aside – told you about the geeky vocab – if you wanted to make your tank a natural scene with undulating greenery and driftwood, that was your call. The ceramic bridge to nowhere was also quite a fetching addition for a vaguely Atlantis-meets-Japanesegarden vibe. For something a bit wilder, gravel in the most day-glo acid colours was also available, complete with licensed Spongebob Squarepants figures and faux corals in shades Pantone would baulk at.

Speaking of merch, back in 2003, a seismic shift took place with the release of the classic animated feature film Finding Nemo. Seemingly overnight, saltwater aquariums went from being a passion for nextlevel, committed enthusiasts to the hottest item on Santa wish lists right across the country. And you couldn’t just get a clownfish. Heaven forbid. At the very least, he/she would need an anemone to nestle in, a starfish like Peach for company and an expensive filtration system to ensure this particular home movie didn’t come to a tragic and floating end. Of course, once this was all in place, the recipient who had gone to bed only the night before in a state of transcendent joy would then

“THEY CAME WITH FILTERS THAT BECAME ENCRUSTED WITH SLIME AND MADE YOU GAG WHEN YOU cleaned THEM, ONCE IN THE KITCHEN, THEN FOREVER OUTSIDE”

awake to proclaim that: “I don’t like fish anymore. I like dinosaurs now.” And, in the midst of all this, there was always that one child in every Australian class who decided that he/she would rather have an axolotl. These were the same curious children who would invariably go on to become technology start-up billionaires.

It’s interesting to note that for many Australians, our fascination with aquariums grew along with the suburban sprawl away from the coast, and inland. No matter your budget, with a little care and imagination, they provided a window into a meditatively beautiful moving picture that pleased the eye and relaxed the mind. And nowadays, how much screen time can you say that about?