`big Dig' Is Part Of The Snowy Folklore
Illawarra Mercury
Friday April 19, 2002
If you plan on hitting the road to the Snowy Mountains on Anzac Day to do a spot of trout fishing, look up a mate of mine called ``Big Dig", the two-up man of the Snowy Mountains at the Berridale Hotel between Cooma and Jindabyne.
His real name's Charlie Byrne, a man who knows more about trout fishing the snow field streams, than anyone I have ever met.
You'll find him outside the Berridale Hotel on Anzac Day running the two-up game for the Snowy Mountains RSL.
Big Dig has been running it for the RSL for 42 years, the last 20 in front of the Berridale Hotel.
Big Dig will put you on to one of his hot spots to catch a couple of trout to take home with you.
It all started for Big Dig when his grandmother Mrs McEvoy was the first white woman to cross the Snowy River to raise a family in the high country.
Big Dig picked up the trout fishing caper at the age of seven years, long before the Snowy Mountain Scheme started in 1949.
``We used to fish the Mowamba and Little Thredbo Rivers as well as the feeder streams running down from the snow fields", Big Dig told me over a schooner at the Berridale Hotel on Melbourne Cup Day during the Snowy Mountains Trout Festival.
``We used to ride horses up into the high country to go fishing and all we carried was a length of line and a couple of hooks in a tin matchbox.
``For a rod we cut a sapling off a tree and for bait caught a grass hopper or a marsh fly we caught biting into our arm.
``We used to hide behind the trunk of a tree growing on the river bank and shake a bait around in front of the tree trunk where trout were waiting for a free feed.
``Trout were very plentiful in the streams during the 1940s before the Snowy Mountains Scheme started and we had little trouble filling our saddle bags up with trout.
``When the first trout hatchery opened in the Snowy Mountains, cormorants better known as black shags became a pest, zooming in on the hatchery and flying off with fledging trout.
The Mowamba Acclimation Society then started to offer $1 for every black shag anyone shot.
``That's how we got enough money to buy a new saddle, or a decent fishing rod", Big Dig said.
When I asked him what he thought of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, he said: ``During the 1940s we were used to having large floods followed by long droughts, but when they dammed the Eucumbene and Jindabyne Rivers all the flood waters were stored to irrigate the orchids of Victoria and Southern NSW.
``Building the Snowy Mountains Scheme was the best event in the history of Australia and nowadays you blokes from the coast have the chance to catch trout in both lakes summer or winter," he said.
So on Anzac Day if you are driving past the Berridale Hotel look up Big Dig the Mr Two-Up of the Snowy Mountains and say hello for me.
© 2002 Illawarra Mercury
