Through Thick And Fin

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday January 7, 1997

ALI GRIPPER

MERV MacLennam is crazy about fish. He knows when a goldfish is grumpy. He can tell just from the look on a carp's face if someone has been trying to feed his fish those damned chocolate sultanas again.

Merv "The Fish Man", as he is known, regards himself as the guardian of more than 400 goldfish, carp and koi that writhe and mate in the shadowy ponds of the Arthur McElhone Reserve,* a concealed botanical treasure at Potts Point.

Wearing his favourite goldfish-printed shirt, Merv pedals from his flat in Rushcutters Bay to patrol the ponds almost every day. He strolls about, picking up dead leaves from the ponds, checking his fish, feeding them and talking to them. His manner is gentle, but he runs a trim ship. It's fine to look at the fish, providing it's respectful. No fish get stolen when he's around; nor do they get hurt. Sometimes, especially around Christmas, this involves vigilance. "We lost about 60 last Christmas," he says. "All these kids were coming down at night and scooping them out with colanders and nets. It must have been some craze for Christmas presents. I had to come down several times a day to keep an eye on them.

"Then there's the riffraff who come down from the Cross. One man came down and started beating the water with an iron rod. He tried to hit the fish on their heads. Hagar and I went to speak to him and after that he didn't come back."

"Hagar" is Hagar The Horrible, another volunteer fish caretaker. But unlike Merv, when Hagar deals with miscreants it's in a manner that many people might find offensive.

Merv is a stockman by training and he spent years working in the Hamersley Range in Western Australia. "We were so hungry, we used to have fishing wire and a bent pin tied around our hats. Within about 10 minutes we'd have caught about 50 mountain trout. It was much better eating than the scrub cattle." This, he says, waving at the harbour view before him, "is peaches and cream compared to all that.

"Fish are pretty smart. If I walk to the edge and stand there quietly for a while, they know who it is. I can sort of see it on their faces, that they're happy to see me."