Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Cressy troutification which occurred a year or so ago in my own town of Cressy where they took on trout as their mainstay to show the world that they were a very great fishing town. Of course, Brumby’s Creek runs just below the town. I grew up on two of the creeks that run into Brumby’s Creek. Brumby’s Creek, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would understand, is named after that bloke Brumby, who is actually related to me through the Hodgetts’s. Even Mr Brumby, I think, who is a politician in Victoria and a Deputy Premier, is related to me through that. Brumby turned his horses out in New South Wales because there was no water and he was sick and tired of it and that created the brumbies, the wild horses. He actually came to Tasmania—that is where the Brumby family started—and I think it was very kind that they wanted to have that creek where there was plenty of water and he got over that terrible dry New South Wales.

Brumby’s Creek is a great creek. It is a fishing creek well known all over the world now and Cressy has latched on to it. Right in the middle of the town are the toilets which have been troutified with a very large trout—a big colourful trout on the stands outside, about the height of two men. On the wall of the toilet is a poem by an old poet, whom I have known for years, an old mate of mine, Tim Thorn, who has been a poet in the Launceston area for the last 30 or 40 years. Tim wrote a poem, which he mentioned me in. So I am actually on the toilet door. I could use other language but I am on the toilet door.

Opposition Member:

It is not handwritten.

Opposition Member:

Has it got a phone number?

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it is not hand written. It is written in a proper way and it adds to the town. The street names are written on a trout sign and each street has one. The school is very involved and the high school has got really involved in it. It has an expo. The expo runs over the whole weekend. This year I understand they have a trout which will be tagged and there will be a $10,000 prize if the trout is caught and you can produce the tag. So there will be a lot of people fishing along that river and trying to catch that tagged trout and a lot of us will be down along there enjoying this day. Of course, Tasmania, and the great electorate of Lyons, is full of these sorts of days—I can think of St Patrick’s Day at Westbury and of the great championship bike ride at Evandale in February, when the world championship penny farthings take place—where thousands of people come to enjoy great festival days of Tasmania.