Wooley: One man’s lakes vision leaves a lasting impact

Keen fisherman Jason Garrett left his piece of the Central Highlands much better than when he found it, writes Charles Wooley

There’s an old adage variously attributed, that time spent fishing “is not subtracted from the sum-total of your life”.

If that’s so then the legendary Tasmanian fly fisherman Jason Garrett should still be alive and heading for a century.

Jason, who died recently at the age of 86, was one of Tasmania’s most dedicated trout fishers and undoubtedly the most visionary.

He was so enthusiastic in his pursuit of trout he did what few anglers would ever even dream of doing; he created his own fishing lakes, a 3000ha watery wonderland in the Tasmanian high country with its own spawning streams and a largely self-sustaining population of wild trout.

Back in 1986 when I first met him, Jason was sometimes considered a dreamer and his lakes a multimillion-dollar folly. But his apparent eccentricity is exactly what establishes Jason’s place among the pantheon of Tasmanians who could see further than the rest of us. Giants in a population of Lilliputians.

I would place Garrett in the company of names like Weindorfer, Pennicott, Currant, Lark and Clifford: each in their own way perceiving possibilities for enhancing and enriching the island without destroying it.

The late Jason Garrett, legendary Tasmanian fly fisherman and developer of London Lakes. Picture: Supplied

Jason loved Tasmania’s Central Plateau as he loved his fishing.

From the moment he saw the large tract of bush and boggy swampland just a few kilometres east of Bronte Park, in the very centre of Tasmania, Jason envisioned great possibilities.

He was a surveyor by profession and quite probably, as a born and bred Tasmanian, a dam builder by nature.

He contemplated not the swampy reedy morass that was, but the broad sparking expanses of gin-clear lakes that might be. The imagined surface would have been clearly marked with those telltale rings of bright water, left by trout when they rise to take insects from the air.

Now there’s a vision to grip the heart of every fly fisher and Jason’s creation, London Lakes, has that and more: beautiful bushland, abundant wildlife with the sweet and exhilarating air full of the hum and the buzz of insect life on the wing.

When London Lakes first started up there was some concern from Tasmanian anglers that private fisheries might become the future of trout fishing: as in England a pursuit only for the rich.

The late Jason Garrett a legendary Tasmanian fly fisherman with a prize catch.

That never happened and given the neglect and decline of our public inland fishery Jason’s venture is now instructive. London Lakes has preserved one small but magnificent corner of Tasmania’s fishing world to remind us of what once was everywhere. And with due care and interest, what might be again.

I spent my early years at nearby Tarraleah and since then have seen so much of our beautiful high-country bush hideously degraded. But thanks to Jason’s long custodianship (continued by the present owners) the flora and fauna of that land once known as the London and Oxford swamps has remained delightfully intact.

In the early mornings and in the dying light the discreet angler, quietly stalking the water margins, will likely be distracted by wallabies, wombats, devils, quolls and eagles.

Filmmakers who want to recapture the essence of unspoilt Tasmanian bush find London Lakes an ideal location, which is how I first met Jason Garrett on a filming expedition many decades ago.

A fisherman stalks trout at the pristine London Lakes, in the Central Highlands. Picture: George Apostolidis/ Tourism Tasmania

He told me how he had approached the original owner, Jim Hall, a legendary cattleman and sawmiller, about purchasing his marshlands cattle-run.

Hall, an irascible giant of a man known as ‘Big Jim’ was initially amenable to selling off some swampy ground. Until Jason revealed his plans.

“He wasn’t too keen when I told him I wanted to flood the marshes,” Jason remembered.

Apparently Big Jim declared, ‘Be buggered you’ll flood it. I’ve spent years draining the bloody place!’

“He took a little convincing,” Jason told me.

Jason shared his passion and explained his vision of a high-quality fishing resort giving the Tasmanian high country an international reputation for trout fishing.

In the end the deal went through, and Jason named the largest of the new waters, Lake Big Jim.

Among the community of Tasmanian anglers many people have been profoundly affected by the life of Jason Garrett.

Fish, fishing rod and reel at London Lakes. Picture: Tourism Tasmania

My old friend John Cleary is a former minister for Inland Fisheries, from a distant time when that position was held by people who actually fished. “Jason was a true visionary. He saw possibilities beyond the imagining of others,” Cleary said. “And he has left his favourite part of the world much better than he found it.”

It must be said of John Cleary that in office he fished diligently and that now in retirement he fishes fanatically. It was Jason who taught him to fish with the fly and as John admits was “responsible for my lifelong addiction”.

No one who visited London Lakes and spent time with Jason could ever come away unaffected.

I returned to the ordinary world determined to build a trout lake of my own on a few acres at Cygnet.

A fisherman with his catch at London Lakes. Picture: Tourism Tasmania

I had seriously caught the bug. I had been a Hydro kid and now thanks to Jason I was at last a dam builder. Admittedly it was a local contractor with his bulldozer who actually built the dam but as I stood on higher ground and ‘supervised’ the redesigning of the world, I had the godlike sense of having caused it all to happen.

In the years that followed I indulged that vanity on breathless summer evenings when my trout rose in the sunset to take moths while the swallows and bats would flit and skim the glassy surface of those marvellous waters which I had brought into being.

Mine was a mere pond but in such reveries, I often wondered whether Jason Garrett way up on London Lakes was also haunting the water margins of his much vaster creation and enjoying an even greater sense of satisfaction.

Having created Australia’s premier trout fishery and then for introducing so many people to the contemplative delights of the natural world, Jason well deserved to take personal delight in his works.

I like to think that not unlike the Creator in the Book of Genesis, Jason Garrett contemplating his lake in the golden afternoon light, “saw all that he had made and behold, it was very good”.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmania-based journalist