A fish called Wander

IWAS amazed to read in the Mercury this week about a novel campaign to save a critically endangered Tasmanian fish from extinction.

The campaign involved people donating $1000 for research and getting to name a red handfish. The amazing thing is that I instantly recognised the handfish in the photo. It was Wander.

The delightful little fish’s mum named her Wander because, when she was a tiny cute little fry, she would sidle off from her siblings to go walking on her two wee hands. Wander loved wandering, and whenever her mum looked the other way the curious little lass meandered into the unknown.

I met the adventurous little Wander and her mum years ago while working as a reporter. They are a delightful pair, well spoken, intelligent and fascinated by the world.

Wander always travelled further afield than most of her kind, who prefer to potter about in their neighbourhood, which they know like the back of their orangey little hands.

I couldn’t wait to tell Wander that her photo was in the newspaper so I found my dusty old contacts book and skipped straight to the letter W to find her address. Grabbing a pen and notebook, I rushed to the little patch of reef in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel near Bruny Island where she lived.

I didn’t anticipate her reaction when she saw me.

“What the hell are you doing here,” Wander screamed. “Get outta here, gaawwn, git.”

Wander’s mum, standing moodily behind her daughter, joined in: “We don’t want your kind here. Haven’t you done enough damage already.”

This was a vastly different attitude to the amiable and adorable fish I’d met years earlier, but I was no stranger to such hostility.

Many years ago working as a reporter I walked into the suburban home of an Aboriginal teen who had been shot dead the night before.

From the outside the house looked deserted but inside it was full of grieving relatives who were enduring inconsolable sadness in mournful silence. When I told the mourners I was a reporter and asked whether anyone would like to speak to me, it was as if they had sniffed smelling salts. Grief turned to animosity. Fair enough too, under the tragic circumstance.

The same happened when I once walked into a pub full of footballers who had hours earlier lost half their team in a fatal plane crash. I asked whether they wanted to speak, was ordered to leave, and gingerly retreated backwards out of the bar.

I once approached a grieving mother and father of a murder victim, surrounded for their own protection and support by a cordon of police at the crime scene.

Two cops launched at me, one each side, grabbing my elbows and thrusting my arms behind my back. I was frogmarched backwards away from the parents while being read the riot act. The anger subsided when another cop approached, saying: “The parents want to speak to him.”

The interview with the parents was tough, but next day a rare moment of naked truth, the raw thoughts and feelings of the parents, was reproduced in the newspaper.

Despite being grief-stricken, the parents thanked me profusely. They were grateful for the chance to speak publicly. Their words were so true, heartfelt and honest they still return to haunt me occasionally in a dream.

After decades reporting, I had learnt that it took courage and composure to walk into such volatile situations but that walking out unscathed was the really challenging bit.

So, I persisted with Wander and her mum as they hurled abuse at me. I explained that I was their chance to speak publicly and that I would write whatever they wanted to say.

“Well you didn’t the last time we met,” Wander quipped, with a nasty smile that looked like she had just swallowed a spoon of vinegar.

Then I remembered the reason I had first spoken with Wander. She had wanted me to tell the world about what she had seen on one of her long walks up the East Coast.

She had told me there were huge ships at Triabunna woodchip mill and that they were dumping tonnes of filthy water and waste. Included in the horrid slurry were armies of starfish and sea urchins.

The urchins were on the march, Wander had told me, and were destroying everything in their path on the sea bed. It was an emergency.

“I couldn’t get anyone to verify what you were saying,” I explained, washing my hands of any responsibility. “So I couldn’t write the story.”

“You could have quoted me,” Wander snapped.

“But I couldn’t quote a fish,” I exclaimed.

“Well you are now,” Wander said, looking me in the eye and for the first time dropping her attitude and letting me see the charming and beautiful inner fish I had caught a glimpse of all those years ago.

“Touche,” I said, and we held each other’s gaze for what seemed like forever.

I put the tip of my finger gently on top of Wander’s delicate little hand. We talked for hours. She told me there were only about 100 of her kind left in the world and that she feared her species would go the way of the thylacine. She said handfish at places like Primrose Sands and Port Arthur had vanished.

She said urchins had turned the ocean floor into a wasteland and that the great kelp forests were dying faster than her species. She said salmon farms were polluting bays and the exotic escapees were angry like dangerous criminals on the run.

She said the cacophony from boats and jetskis was a mind-numbing drone that was driving sea creatures mad.

Sewage spills were stinking up shorelines. She said the water was too warm and starting to taste like batteries.

“Can you help?” she asked.