Man caught catching single undersized barra to feed elders on Croker Island avoids conviction

AN Aboriginal corporation staffer busted catching a single undersized barramundi to feed local elders on Croker Island has avoided a conviction after being forced to fly to Darwin to face court

AN Aboriginal corporation staffer busted catching a single undersized barramundi to feed local elders on Croker Island has avoided a conviction after being forced to fly to Darwin to face court.

The Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation’s Greg Brown pleaded guilty in the Darwin Local Court to possessing the 48cm fish in breach of the rules at Minjilang on February 12.

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Prosecutor Tim Wrathall said the 52-year-old didn’t have a ruler with him on the day and told police he was going to eat the fish later that night.

But Brown, representing himself, told the court he was actually planning to give the fish to a local family in need “with full permission of the traditional owners”.

”I was doing this to help local community members who are quite often poor and often on Centrelink and struggling to make ends meet each week, in the evenings I tried to give fish to a variety of old people who can’t fish for themselves,” he said.

Greg Brown pleaded guilty in the Darwin Local Court to possessing a 48cm undersized barramundi.

“On the evening of the 12th I was intending to take the fish back to old people for dinner, however, police confiscated the fish and I was obviously not able to give it out to a family.”

Brown said he explained the situation to prosecutors and asked them to use their discretion to withdraw the charge but they refused, leaving him with a $720 bill for return flights to Darwin.

“Police came to my place of work to lay charges, this caused extreme embarrassment,” he said.

“A lot of community members came into my work asking why police had come into our place of work and I’m extremely emotionally exhausted by this process and the amount of community interest and concern.”

In fining Brown $100 without conviction, judge Dick Wallace said while the offence may be “fairly common”, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a case in court.

“I can think of plenty involving people catching too many fish, catching fish with the wrong equipment in the Mary River and so on and a number of those people catching undersized crabs but if I’ve ever seen one of these barramundi cases before it’s a long time ago,” he said.

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Mr Wallace said the suggestion Brown was catching the fish for others “normally wouldn’t be that credible a claim”.

“But in light of the references where a number of leading members of the community say that’s exactly what you were in the habit of doing it becomes an extremely credible claim and a doubly unusual case,” he said.

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