Stories of the Oldfield River The Oldfield River was used in many ways and is still a major focus in the area. The Reynolds family camped on the upper reaches of the Munglinup River and also the Oldfield Estuary during the 1950s until the late 1970s. Ron (Doc) Reynolds still visits the areas with his family and friends.

"Well we spent a lot of time right along the coastal [areas] because my dad was a fence post cutter. We were living in a shack on the Munglinup River where dad used to cut tea tree posts because there wasn't any other posts to cut and the farmers in that area wanted the tea tree posts. And then of course once we cut the posts during the summer we used to go down to the mouth of the Oldfield and we used to do a lot of fishing and that down over there. The road going in back in them days was pretty tough, it had really boggy sections. Of course dad worked around that area because of his contacts and I suppose what happened was other farmers wanted to get fence posts for their own blocks. [If] we wanted to go and catch a fish we always could catch a feed of fish. We used to do netting. Back in them days [1950s] we only took what we needed, there was no need to get a big lot of fish because we just couldn't store it, we had no ice. We had the old Coolgardie cooler sort of thing and kept everything cool enough underneath the big tea tree that grew along there.

We were camping on the eastern side of the [Oldfield] mouth and we weren't camped where the actual campsite is there now. We just played around and used to walk around the trees and-.we never had a care in the world. We never had a fear of snakes we just ran through the bush. So that's how we basically used to live whilst we were there. They were really good times; we were pretty free we didn't have a care. We went to bed when the sun went down and we got up when the sun came up. Time was of no essence then, we came back when it was lunchtime or when we got hungry in the middle of the day. Most times we'd just play all the way through, we'd come back and have a feed then go back fishing or hunting."
Ron (Doc) Reynolds

The first settlers soon realised the fishing potential of the Oldfield River and estuary and also the Munglinup Beach.

"There was always fishing parties on the river, you know, it seemed to be their Sunday picnics. They'd all dress up back in the 1920s and 30s and all go fishing. There was plenty of fish. When we first came out it was easy to go to some of the pools and catch three or four dozen fish. But they're still there, you can still catch fish in any pool along there.

Through 1994 or 1995 you could smell the river as though there was something wrong with it. So I went down to investigate, and there was tons of dead fish on the river here. I got one of the CALM [Department of Conservation and Land Management] chaps to come up, and have a look. The river was low, it was terribly low, and it hadn't run through to flush out for about six years. I thought it had got too salt, but they come and did an inspection of it, and it wasn't that at all, the fish had run out of oxygen. We had about five days of 35-40 degrees, and it was dead still, and they had sort of run out of oxygen. The answer to it was, or as I have been told since, had we have set up a little water pump or anything just to move the water, they would have been alright, but that's the only time that the fish have ever died. I was a bit concerned for a while about it, that it might have cleaned them out, but next year they were there again. They're still there now. The fish don't go outside the [northern] boundary, strange as it may seem. There's a big rock ledge goes right across the river and there's no fish on the north of that."
Ron Gibson

"We used to fish just off the Munglinup Beach and go down the Oldfield. There's a break in the reef there and a lot of bronze whaler and gummy sharks used to come in at night. The fishing is definitely not as good as it was then. There still are fish around. But we used to catch a lot of fish then. Then we used to walk up the beach right from what they call 'Christies' right through to Pincer Point. There was that many gutters all along there and a lot of salmon that we used to catch. We used to go down to the Standish's [on the Oldfield River], which is Wallefeld's now. We used to go over to them and several times I took a dustbin down there and filled it with bream and bought them back here and put them in the Munglinup [River]. This is the big waterhole down below us here. You can go and fish there and there's a lot of bream down there now."
Don MacKenzie

"Between our properties there was a pool that was quite a long pool and probably between fifty and a hundred metres wide and that was a marvellous pool for fishing. We mostly used that just because it was handy. But there was fish in a lot of the other pools too."
Peter Standish

"We had quite a few of those [family gatherings] in days gone by. We always were able to catch some fish there so that was part of the attraction. They're still there but they're fairly hard to catch. I think there's probably more fish food in the river now than there was. Possibly because of more algae and therefore more little insects that eat algae and so more fish food. That's just a theory. Up until about 1986 we were able to go down there and catch fish whenever we wanted fish. We'd get our six or eight fish and come home again. But that year the river flooded three times I think in the one year - '86. I think it also did in '87. Thousands of fish died out on the banks; there were dead fish all along the river. That's happened a couple of other times since then. Now everybody has a theory as to why they died but nobody really knows. It would be interesting if somebody would find out why they died."
Ralph Silburn

"[Fishing] Yes, yes. Oh I used to go with the dogger's wife. We used to yak, yak, yak and pull fish in and I'm sitting there not getting many, Grace Dunn would catch lots at the Stepping- Stones. The kids and I used to go fishing further up the river towards the main road there we had a few rocks and places there. There was one story they call 'Mum's Rock'. Through the summer months every couple of weeks I'd take the kids fishing. So I went up there and there was some men sitting there fishing. Anyway we go in there and the rivers down quite a bit that year. Ahh I slid into the river. There was my little kids up there crying their heads off and these guys just kept on fishing. I managed to find some ledges and crawl myself dripping wet out and so I turned and told them off.

We used to hear the chappies coming down from Kalgoorlie blasting the river mouth for fish to take back up. We'd all get in the cars and go for our life to see if we could catch 'em but quite often we didn't know where to look, they'd be gone before we got there. [They were] netting and then blasting at the last second it was terrible really. I think we sent out enough warnings if they were ever caught they'd get strung up (laughs)."
Elvie Scadding

"We used to go to the river quite often. You'd run out of meat when you got meat once a fortnight and we'd always go down. My husband he'd shoot a duck and we'd use the duck gut as good fish bait, so we'd use that and we caught fish so we'd have enough meat for three or four days. The best fishing time was about five-o'clock in the morning so we'd get up about half past four and we had a little Austin A40 Ute and we'd trundle over to the river and fish, come home and have breakfast by seven o'clock.

[We used to go to] Wilga Banks. Actually it's down from Wilga Banks but it was very good fishing there. Doyle's quite often [came]. We'd go late afternoon and there'd be quite a few of us down there. Somebody had already got there a bit earlier and they were fishing and we'd all sit along the bank. But after they'd put the telephone line in, the PMG I think it was called in those days, the chaps blew the fish, to get fish, and that just wrecked that hole. I don't know if there's any fish in there now. [It] must have been about '64 or '65 in that time because they had to go across Merri Merri's paddock and across the river to Silburn's. That just spoilt it because we had to go fishing elsewhere. And then we'd quite often go fishing with the dogger, Charlie Dunn and Grace Dunn. That was down at the Munglinup and the Oldfield Crossing, down in those holes there and there was quite good fish there.

My son who's in Queensland, when he was about sixteen I think it was, they wanted to catch the biggest fish, bream. So he went to Perth and he had enough money so he bought an aluminium dingy with a motor on it so that they could get out in the middle of the river. They didn't catch any more fish (laughter). It was just a myth that they thought that they were going to. But when they got in the centre of the river there was no more fish anyway."
Avril Lawrance

"Yes there's bream down there in this pool. A lot of the other pools will dry out during the summer depending on how much winter rain we've had. Most of the other pools are only five-foot deep at the most. Certainly anything north of this pool we go to has no water running into it during the summer and they just slowly dry up. I guess they become just too salty for the bream anyway."
Tom Walker