“The world doesn’t need another fishing show,” says the Australian co-host of a brand new fishing show.
But Fishing the Wild is unlike your average fishing show. The most striking element is its setting, the gloriously remote tropical region of Arnhem Land in Australia’s far north. The second is the complete lack of product placement or the cheesy hosting ubiquitous in televised adventures of guys and their fishing tackle.
It’s all part of the plan by its co-creators and hosts, Territorian Morgan Hartney and ex-AFL player Hamish Simpson, who have been traveling through Arnhem for decades and wanted to share their experiences of the Aboriginal-owned country and its Yolngu people with the world.
Hartney has been going into Arnhem since he was seven years old venturing in with his father who worked for the Northern Land Council, and then going in with mates for days or weeks at a time as a teenager.
He met Simmo on a pearl farm in their early twenties and they quickly paired up for long fishing trips into the difficult country, taking the camera and filming bits and pieces along the way.
“We’ve experienced far more unbelievable things when there haven’t been cameras rolling ... and we’re gobsmacked every single time we go out there,” Hartney, who also directed the program, tells Guardian Australia in Darwin.
“Some trips we catch more fish and see more beautiful areas, but we don’t rate them any more valuable than the ones we’ve spent three days crawling through mud trying to find another creek, because it’s about the discovery.”
The style of show, seven years in the making, produced by Darwin company Run for the Hills and assisted by local Indigenous tour operators and Tourism NT, was clear from the start although it took some convincing.
“We couldn’t do a proper fishing show in Arnhem Land without including the Aboriginal people, and we didn’t want to put out another fishing show,” says Hartney.
“As soon as we conceptualised it and took the idea, we could see people’s eyes rolling back thinking ‘you want to do another fishing show? Yeah so does every single other bloke up there’.”
These days getting a fishing show on the air often involves the production company actually paying the network for the privilege, because they make so much money out of the advertising and product placement. With a determination to have none of that in Fishing the Wild, Hartney says it was extremely difficult to sell.
“We had to generate this money to create the whole show ourselves, and we could have sold out long ago and made money on this,” says Hartney.
“But we thought once we achieved that we’d be appreciated more. Because people don’t want to be force-fed products.”
In Fishing the Wild, ‘Morgs and Simmo’ introduce the audience to a largely unfamiliar land and to the Indigenous custodians who have allowed them into the country over the decades.
“People from Australia, like my friend Marcus says who lives out there, they just look at the culture and think it’s mumbo jumbo,” says Hartney. “It’s so confusing they don’t even take that first step to learning about it so there’s always this mystique. So that’s what this series was trying to do – give people that first step towards understanding that culture.”
“We have the oldest living culture in the world here, and that doesn’t hit home to enough people, I think.”
The series is currently screening on Australian commercial station 7mate – a deliberate move by producers to see Aboriginal culture put in front of a different audience.
“We didn’t want to flood the audience with too much information about Aboriginal culture and people, we just wanted to give them enough to go: ‘wow that’s really interesting, I might take the next step to learn a bit more about it’.”
Hartney is surprised at just how broad the appeal of the show has been.
“We’ve got a lot of people watching and engaging in our social media who are in demographics who would never ever delve into Aboriginal culture but they’re doing that now off the back of the fishing aspect of the show.”
There’s also been interest from overseas networks – particularly in Europe – which Hartney puts down to a greater interest in and awe of Arnhem Land from Europeans than Australians, for whatever reason that may be.
In each episode – the last of which airs on Saturday afternoon but all are viewable online for now – Hartney and Simpson take viewers searching for abundant land and sea life through bushland, mangroves, floodplains, tidal creeks and billabongs, along white sandy beaches, and spearfishing in pristine but treacherous waters.
Episode three saw the pair get out of the water only to later see a saltwater crocodile cruising around the same rock shelf. There have been injuries, and Hartney says there are risks which they can only mitigate to an extent beyond the decades of experience in the team.
“Don’t try this at home,” Hartney jokes.
“It’s not just the animals. The tides are massive and that area is not surveyed, so you don’t know where there’s reefs or rocks. We keep pretty tight with Aboriginal people in places we don’t know because their knowledge of the area is unbelievable.”
Syndication is being explored, it’s hoped 7mate will repeat the episodes soon, and Hartney and Simpson are already planning another series. In the meantime though there are more trips into Arnhem on the cards.
“It’s difficult on relationships and sucks all your money away,” he laughs.
“But if people had a second life they probably wouldn’t be doing the same thing they’re doing with this one, it would be something more adventurous. We think we’re living that second life as our first, so we have zero regrets. Our thirst for that country only increases every trip.”
