Wooley: It’s time that we learn to harden up, rather than hoping for divine intervention

Even though you might kid yourself that you’re never alone as you have hundreds of ‘friends’ on social media. News flash: They are not your friends. Just like the superstitious peasants of old you are deluding yourself. There’s no one there.

An angler enjoys the serenity – and being about as alone as it gets – of fishing in Tasmania's Central Highlands.

Internet and mobile phones have sent us back down the time tunnel to the Middle Ages.

In those superstitious times we were never alone. Walking solo through a remote wooded glade, toiling in a field or dozing in a flea-infested bed in a primitive hovel, we were never without company.

God was watching. And if not God then one of His angels or the host of saints whom the Holy Roman Church had reconfigured from the gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian world.

Billy Connelly caught it brilliantly. In one of his routines, he depicts the angels as a horde of snitches, spying on you from over the edge of a cloud and dobbing you in.

As Billy put it, the angel would call out, “Hey God, look here. There’s a guy down there wanking!”

But this divine surveillance had its upside. Lost in the woods and fearing wolves and bandits? No worry, as you try to find your way home you can have a good long reassuring chat with Saint Christopher, who looks after travellers.

There you are, plodding through the sycamores and happily conversing with someone who is not there.

You are deluded, but you are not crazy.

Everyone in the Middle Ages had invisible friends and was talking to themselves.

So, fast-forward to last week. I was alone fishing at lovely Tailers Bay in Bronte Lagoon. Not quite alone because Dusty the dog stalked my every splashy footstep. But certainly I was out of touch with the human world. And I long ago realised there was no point importuning the god of trout.

An angler enjoys the serenity – and being about as alone as it gets – of fishing in Tasmania's Central Highlands.

When I’m up there, I am alone on the slate grey water casting a fly into a cold southerly drift, which will ensure there are no insects on the ruffled surface and that the trout will have their heads down – but if I am lucky, their tails up.

The bay takes its name from the “tailing” trout, feeding on snails and aquatic insects, waving their tails in the air in the shallows. “Hey Charlie, here I am. Cast over this way.”

It is an amazing sight, but it doesn’t happen every day. Still, it keeps me coming back to haunt this deserted shore, as the poet says, “alone and palely loitering”.

Alone but not unobserved by the new gods of the world.

It is amazing. Seventeen thousand kilometres away on Lake Garda in the alpine north of Italy my son Dave is watching me. Set back about 100m from the Bronte shore there is a webcam installed by Anglers Alliance. There are seven of them across some of our best trout waters. You can access them for $10 a year, but to me at least you would need to be the Kremlin’s best hacker to navigate the site.

Charles Wooley's son Dave was hooked on fishing from an early age.

My son is a trout tragic and is always checking out his favourite fishing spots. He is coming home for the summer, and unless I go out on the water, I will never see him.

It is entirely my fault. He was in tiny waders and fly-fishing from the age of five. And he has never recovered.

So it is that when I retreat troutless from the lake and return to the shack where there is internet, my mobile phone pings.

And there it is, the webcam picture all the way from Italy, and that’s me out on the water and Dusty who has sensibly installed himself on a tiny island nearby. The water is still cold.

Of course, the truth is I was only alone on Bronte because my phone was off. I’ve never forgotten being in the same spot years ago when I got a call from Sydney and orders to go to Afghanistan. This time the news was of Gaza and, as I am supposed to be filming next door in Egypt in a couple of weeks, I preferred a consoling and temporary state of radio silence.

Charles Wooley's dog Dusty also loved accompanying the Wooley family on their fishing expeditions from an early age.

On the wacky west coast of America, they call it “mindfulness”; the state of living in the minute without headphones and a musical soundtrack, and without checking in on people you pathetically call your “friends” – people who wouldn’t give a damn if you fell in a hole and broke your neck, unless there was a funny picture to post.

They are not your friends any more than Saint Christopher was protecting you in the medieval forest. Or the angels were making sure you were behaving yourself.

Just like the peasants of old you are deluding yourself. There’s no one there. Certainly no one who cares, any more than I care about the twats who tweet.

We’ve just got to harden up folks.

Charles Wooley's dog Dusty, sensibly installs himself on an island on a lake in the Central Highlands. A good choice considering the water on this day was about 7C.

Though I must admit the last trout I caught, I was about to bang on the head for dinner when it looked me in the eye. It looked at me with Dusty’s eye and I couldn’t do it.

I put it back and we both watched dinner swim away (Dusty loves a boneless fillet).

I am as unsentimental about the gods as they are about us and have no time for angels and invisible friends.

But if we are to survive World War III or climate catastrophe, whichever comes first, clearly, I too am going to have to harden up.

The next Bronte trout that waves its tail at me is in the pan.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist.