Do Go On - 270 - The New Zealand Fish Terrorist

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Throughout the second half of the 20th century New Zealand’s waterways were invaded by thousands of introduced fish that have changed the environmental makeup of the country. This was all the work of one man, The New Zealand Fish Terrorist, Stewart Smith - this is his story.Buy tickets to our live streamed shows (including the full extended stream of this episode!):https://sospresents.com/authors/dogoonSupport the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPodCheck out our AACTA nominated web series: https://www.youtube.com/user/stupidoldchannel Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/Submit-a-TopicTwitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasREFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118845051/the-liberator-how-one-mans-15000-pest-fish-changed-new-zealands-waterwayshttps://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/fishing/related-articles/the-fisheries-and-angling-team/the-new-zealand-fish-terroristhttps://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/black-sheep/story/2018756857/invasive-the-story-of-stewart-smithhttp://ahnz.anarkiwi.co.nz/1929-that-pommy-bastard/https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1208/S00554/pommie-bastard-book-on-environmental-renegade-launched.htm

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates.

Welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnikey and as always I'm here with Matt Stewart and Jess Perkins. Hello Dave, hello Matt. Hello, Dave, hello Jess. I'm Matt. I'm Matt Stewart. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us one and all.

Great to be in. It's so good to be in. Do you know what this is all about this show? Well, look, I've tried to explain what I think it is. But I struggled, and to be honest, so did both of you. No. Thank you. Jess, we delegated and then we had a meeting and said never again.

Then we said, right, let's give Matt a shot. And he jumped in and we said, oh my God. I thought that there was, you know, rock bottom. But wow, he lifted up the ladder. We got into the ladder underneath the floor. Got to the end of the molten core. Yeah, oh my God. It's been a little rhyme there, stuff.

So what I did a few weeks ago is I You know semi-jokingly said Hey if there's any you know muses out there that listen to the show That want to write a little 60s style jingle Like a sitcom theme song that explains the show For anyone who's never heard it before And multiple people have sent them in And I think we have another entry this week

This one This one comes in from Matthew Abad from Seattle I pause slightly before reading out his surname because he's given me the pronunciation. He knows me well. Yeah, right. What were you going to say? Matt Abad.

I might have said, I reckon I would have gone close to that, actually. It's a four-letter word. Matt, come on. Give me a chance. Did he say how to say Matt? Because that is, when you know, you've really stuffed up, they're telling you how to say your own name. Marte-A-Bard.

Mortar-Mortar. Matt Abar. Oh, fuck, I did fuck it up. Matt Abad. So, hit it. If this is your first time joining us. Refreshing a thing tries to report

interrupting Hence the name It always starts with a question Oh That is cute That was amazing I loved that And honestly that's the most 60s-esque one so far

For sure That was so good Thank you so much Matt Ibad From Seattle So hopefully that's cleared up a few things For people who haven't heard it before Yes And like Matt said

The episode does start with a question I'm doing the report this week. Jess and Dave don't know what the topic is. That was all covered in the jingle. Why am I going back over it? So here's my question for you too. Stuart Smith is seen as an environmental terrorist in New Zealand. What kind of animal did he introduce to their ecosystem?

Oh. What have they got? They don't like. I mean, no one likes a rabbit. That's true. And someone did introduce rabbits over there, but it was not this man. Have they got like, do they have snakes? No, they don't have any snakes.

That's what I thought, yeah. I was like, I think that's why I was associating New Zealand with snakes. I was like, I'm pretty sure they don't have them. I only do, yeah, I only just like that reading this. No, but you may be a closer. It's not guinea pigs. Think more wet. Foxes.

More wet, okay. Sting rays. Not stingrays. Think broader. Think broader. But wetter. Even larger stingrays. Fish.

Fish. Yes. Jess, it is fish. They had no fish there before. They had fish. Amazing. Hang on. Wow.

New Zealand before. They had some fish. Before he arrived. There was no snakes, no fish, no hills. There's just flat land. Nothing there. Someone that brought in clumps of dirt. Yeah.

And on the sixth day, he rested. But that is a different story for a different day. According to the New Zealand official quoted in an article on stuff.com. Z by Charlie Mitchell. This is one of the big articles about, I'll quote Mitchell a lot. But in this article, New Zealand official said, imagine if one guy was responsible for the introduction of rats, possums, rabbits, stotes, and pigs to New Zealand.

Stuart Smith was pretty much that guy, but he just did it to freshwater ecosystems around the country with fish. Right. So he threw some foxes into a river. Yeah, only they were fish. Oh, okay, that clears that up. Right, so it's the equivalent. Equivalent, that's right.

Yeah, destructive. Though, I think for some reason, this guy, this official, didn't think people could understand just fish. So he put it in land animal terms. I am a bit confused. I think people, well, it's certain kinds of fish. Yeah. Non-natives fish. Yeah, I was going to say, I reckon you'll clear it up with this report.

But I'm going to take it back a little bit talking about Stuart Smith and how he came up, how he grew up, and then how he came to be the fish terrorists of New Zealand. Wow. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Zealand's waterways were invaded by thousands of introduced species of fish that have changed the environmental makeup of the country. This was the work of just one man, the New Zealand fish terrorist, Stuart Smith. Fish terrorist.

is one of the lamest band names I've ever heard. Well, that was the name that the people voted for. 60% of patrons voted for it. And I kind of knew it. When I put in the New Zealand fish terrorist, I'm like, this is going to get votes. Because you're imagining like dynamite or something being put inside of fish. But that's, I imagine, not what's happened there.

No, that's not what happens. Although quite a similar thing happened with a pig at one point. But we'll get to that. Smith was born in the east end of London in 1913. According to the Otaga Daily Times, Smith's early life growing up in the east end of London was a happy playground where he had mastered the art of catching tidlers in the sandhill ponds by the age of five.

And this play developed into a lifelong passion. Right, so he's a lifelong tidler. Yeah, loved catching a tidler. Do you know what a tidler is? Just little fish. Or are you telling me it's like, something else. No, no, no.

Do you know what a tidler is? No. Do you even know what it? Yeah, come on. I'd name their first five albums. Yeah, come on. Apparently, there were lots of ponds around at that time in his neighborhood as Clay was being dug out to make brick houses.

So that would leave divvets in the ground, which would fill with rainwater. And then these little fish would get in there. How would they get in there? And then kids, I guess they came in when they were real little in the rain. Yeah. Fish falling from the sky. You never believe it. There was fish everywhere.

I said, get the bread. We'll have dinner. Get the bread. So yes, somehow fish like Gudgeon and Roach would get in there. And real beautiful. That was my nickname in high school. Gudgeon. Your best friend, Roach.

So on the back of my year 12 jumper. Gudgeon. So he got really good at fishing these little fish at a very young age. and he soon figured out he could sell these fish that he caught with his homemade fishing rod, and he sold them to adults as live bait. Before long, he saved up enough money to buy a bike. Like he was a little kid just making cash. Just hustling.

Pennings at a time sort of thing. Clearly a bright kid, Smith won a scholarship by age 11, according to a radio New Zealand story on him. Life sounded pretty good at this stage, and his own diaries back this up. Later in life, he would look back on his London upbringing very fondly. But that was all about to come to an abrupt end. Smith later recalled that after turning 15, his father, quote, quite casually, said to him, you're not going back to school. You're going to New Zealand.

Just out of nowhere. Yeah, okay. Oh, just over toast. Yeah. Oh, why are you in a uniform? Kids, they just sent him off to New Zealand. Just the two boys. Yeah.

So according to the anarchist, his sister. of New Zealand's Joseph Coates government worried about population decline at the time. The way this article describes it's like this was the market going, we're about to crash. So people are having less kids because they can't afford them. But Coates comes in and goes, no, we need more kids. So they started trying to combat this by offering tax cuts to those having kids as well as creating a bachelor tax on unmarried men. So if you were a man who wasn't married, you paid more tax.

Wow. That's wild. The Annika site says, the message was clear. Take a wife, have more babies, grow this nation's population. Wow, this really rolls off the time. Feed children you can't afford to feed. They continue. This same logic applied to the idea of growing the New Zealand population by importing young men from Britain.

That's fucking crazy. We don't have kids. Let's import some kids. Isn't that wild? That's crazy. So they needed fun. Farm workers and thousands of boys from poorer families in Britain were shipped down, including Smith and his brother.

Their father, a gambler who had money troubles, probably saw it as a win-win. The boys would head off to New Zealand and get a job, and he'd have two less mouths to feed. Once arriving and getting to work, he found, this is Smith, he found he wasn't a big fan of farming and spent all his free time on a local fishing boat pulling up snapper. He later recalled, I thought to myself, this is the life. Why would anyone want to farm When there's an ocean full of fish Just waiting to be pulled up

Is he just obsessed with fish Look at this I don't know why you're bothering about land You can come out here on water There's fish in there Can you believe it? Even more than the little tidalers Yeah look at the size of the tidalers they got here

They got big tidalus Sorry what did you say This bit's brutal According to the Otago Times Farming did not work out for Smith He quit after having to destroy his dog with a fence batten. The poor beast had bitten Smith after being caught in a trap

and he could see no alternative. He had to kill his own dog. Oh my God. Oh, so rough. He then tried moving into fishing full time. Around this time, he got to know a man named Jack Alec, the head of the local harbour board. Jack became a mentor for Smith,

imparting both his fishing knowledge and political views. And before long, he'd converted Smith to communism. It's a twist you probably didn't see how many. There you go. It was not how I expected that sentence to end. For context, as Radio New Zealand put it, where in the 1930s, communists had swept to power in Russia overthrowing what was widely seen as an autocratic and brutal regime.

The rest of the world had yet to see the darker side of Soviet-style communism. For many people, communism looked like a way of the future, particularly when they saw how badly ordinary people were suffering in capitalist states during the Great Depression. Smith was amongst those who were swept up by the dreams of a communist utopia. He later became a member of the New Zealand Communist Party. So this kind of like this way of thinking about things kind of affected how he

dealt with the fish and releasing fish in the future. And it probably led to him wanting to do it in a lot of ways. Right. So he became a communist fisher. Yes. He released those fish for the commie good. Wow. Red fish under the bed?

No. So I reckon there's something there. You think of it though. Don't set us homework mid-report. While waiting for the Utopia to arrive, he continued battling away trying to make a living in the fishing industry. Around this time, he was about to head out on a fishing job using explosives. But according to Radio New Zealand,

a piglet got into his shed and ate his detonators. He was so angry that he kicked the pig, which then exploded. No. The pig exploded. Oh my God. It's one of the wackiest things I've ever heard. It feels like it's from like a teen gross out film sort of thing.

Yeah, he got mad. So he kicked a pig. Which exploded. When World War II broke out in 1939. No more information. No more information. I couldn't leave it out. No, you have to be that in.

I'm like, I have to put that in. Sure. So World War II broke out in 1939. and Smith was called up for service. He wanted to volunteer for the Navy, but was instead enlisted in the army. He didn't like this at all. No, away from the fish.

And the sea. I know, that's what I thought at first. I'm like, obviously he wants to be on the sea where the fish are. But it turns out that it was more of a fear of a conspiracy. He'd been told by a communist friend that in the New Zealand army, his fellow troops would take him and other communist members out on a mission somewhere and execute them.

Right. And he fully believed that. That was something around the New Zealand, communist circles. They believe if you join the army, you won't come back. But the Navy, they won't do that. Yeah, apparently not in the Navy. So I'm not sure what that would be. So this seems to be a conspiracy theory without merit, but he fully believed it. And refusing to join the army meant he was prosecuted and sent to a detention camp as a conscientious objector. During the war, Smith's camp began running very low on food. And people tell them the story with like,

in a war effort, the people who didn't want to fight, they were like a low priority for food. The soldiers and others were getting the food, so they were doing it pretty tough at the camp. Nearby was a river that was apparently one of the best trout fishing rivers in the world. Having found out Smith was a fisherman, the higher-ups at the camp got him to start fishing to help supplement their food supply. And before long, Smith had trained up a team of other prisoners

to work with him to catch, prepare and smoke 30 to 40 trout a day. Whoa. Teacher, team of meant to fish. But the fishing they were doing was illegal, and it wasn't long before news got down to the bloody bigwigs down in Capitol Hill down in Wellington. So soon after, they started getting shipments of Smith Smoke Trout to Parliament House.

So they didn't do anything about it. Yeah, they're like, oh, send some of it. I'll take some of that fish. Hey, you guys fishing. Can I have some? Go on. Yeah, exactly. Can I have some?

Smith found it all very humorous that he was a prisoner being asked to break the law by those keeping him a prisoner. He found it a bit ironic and the whole situation probably further underlined the corrupt nature of the capitalist system in his mind. Right. He's like, that's it, these capos, breaking rules.

This is a very funny situation I'm in just laughing himself to sleep at night in his prison cell. That's so funny. Apparently he found it hilarious. Every time he casts off, this is hilarious. I haven't seen my family in years. This is so, so, so funny because of these corrupt capitalists. Very, very funny.

What are they like? When the war ended, Smith was released. Again, very funny. He got a piece of land in Massey, a suburb in the northeast of Auckland where he built a service station or a gas station. Yeah. Yeah, petrol station. Servo. Servo.

Convenience store. Convenience store. petroleum supplier. The Bowser. Yeah, the Bowser. According to his biographer, Brian Winters, I'll mention him later, but he ends up having a book written about him. He worked hard building up the business over the following 16 years before Caltechs came in and invested. I don't know they bought some of the land or they bought some of the business, but anyway, it meant that Smith now had money flowing in regularly.

So he nailed this investment of setting up this business because it set him up financially for life. This also opened up more free time for Smith So I was able to direct more attention back to his passion Fishing Oh, I thought it was running the bowser He does love the sea Yes But it wasn't the trout fishing that he loved

Even though he was made to do it in the prison camp He saw that as a style of fishing for the rich Oh, he prefers finding a puddle Dropping in a homemade hook And then getting a three-inch long fisher Selling it for a penny. A hundred percent that, yes. No, you like these little tidler.

He loved tidler fishing. Or more accurately, what is known as course fishing. This is the style of fishing he grew up with. It's a term I hadn't heard before. Have you heard coarse fishing? C-O-A-R-S-E. Course. According to dictionary.com,

coursefish are a freshwater fish that is not a member of the salmon family, these toft fishes. salmon and trout and those big. So he likes the working class fish? Yeah, 100% that's what this is about. Game fishing on the other hand is fishing for salmon and trout and these kind of fish. Wikipedia calls course fishing angling for freshwater fish which are traditionally considered undesirable as a food or game fish.

Oh, okay. So it's just to catch them. They're not for eating, but that's the kind of fishing you want to do. And a big part of it seems like it was because this was the working class fishing. There is, or at least used to be this class divide between the two styles of fishing. It seems like there may be still is a little bit. The upper classes of Britain would be in a game fishing. Course fishing was for the working class.

Course fishers will catch all sorts of fish. Rudd, roach, gudgin, perch. Oh, beautiful names. Beautiful. The problem was, for the most part, these kinds of fish didn't exist in the land of the Long White Cloud, New Zealand. So Smith went about changing this. No, he did. Why?

This wasn't the first time someone had introduced fish to New Zealand. According to Mitchell, New Zealand has several dozen native freshwater fish, most of which are nocturnal, discreet and tucked away in streams far from civilization. Few of them grow larger than 10 centimetres. They don't make for great angling. Recognising this, early European settlers decided to bring their favourite sports fish with them, trout. Trout flourished in New Zealand's cooler waters, with limited competition from the native species. The trout Fissary is now so prosperous, it attracts anglers from around the world. It's become like a big tourist industry for New Zealand. But this was all seemingly done legally. And according to the New Zealand government website, from the late 1800s, European settlers

brought trout and salmon to New Zealand's lakes and rivers so they could fish them for sport. The most common species today are brown trout, rainbow trout and Chinook salmon. All done legally, I think. and Smith saw this as a double standard. Introduced species of fish were okay as long as they were for rich people to fish. So on the one hand, it could be argued

Smith's actions were ideological. On the other, perhaps he was just trying to recapture his childhood. Either way, his actions over the coming years would irreparably change New Zealand's waterways. According to Mitchell's article on stuff, much like New Zealand's native land birds, its freshwater fish had evolved in an environment with few natural predators. New species can shake up an ecosystem that evolved in a delicate equilibrium,

and in New Zealand the result has been chaotic. It's interesting that apparently when the Europeans came to New Zealand, they were basically like, there's no fish here, pretty much. We need to fix this by giving them our great fish. And that's still not really seen as particularly controversial, but what he has done with these other kinds of fish is. So it's not as black and white as maybe it first seemed to me, even though it's pretty clear what he did was very wrong.

But it's just weird that it's the salmon and the trout aren't seen in the same way. And no one ever thought to do that with poisonous snakes. No, and it's never happened. Yeah. I can't believe you don't have red-bellied blacks out here. Come on. I'll sort that out. At least a couple hundred into the bush.

And it's often done because it's one animal's released. and they're like, oh, these got out of hand. We've got to release another one. Yeah, it just spirals out of control. Cain toads were meant to get the cane beetles in Australia. And that happened with different things over there. Apparently they released ferrets to try or stoats, which I've never even heard of, to combat the rabbits.

But then they got out of hand and they were eating all the native birds. So, yeah, it's, it all reminds me of Homer getting stuck in quicksand. You know, he's like, all right, I'm stuck. My legs are stuck. I'll get them out with my hands and I'll get my hands out with my face. At first, Smith went about it by,

with a letter writing campaign. He was trying to convince people rather than do it sort of under the cover of darkness. And who is he writing letters to? To newspapers to be published. And they're hoping that he'll write the headlines like,

Gudgeons needed or something. This one I'll read out now was from pretty early on. He wrote, If children are to become interested in wildlife, angling is part of their education. If the pond is made large enough with the sheltered area in the centre, it could be stocked with rod and tinch to provide angling for the children. The right for children to fish is a part of basic human history.

But there are those here who would like to make it otherwise, over my dead body. I have never fished. Well, not once in my entire life. Neither have I. Oh, actually, that's a complete lie. I have fished virtually on a couple of games of my Nintendo Switch. Oh, well done. Did you catch anything?

Yeah. Pretty fishing. A couple of tiddlers. Yeah, a couple of tidalers. None of the rich people stuff. Yuck. So over my dead body, I mean, you are coming across a little strong. That started out like, hey, it's for the kids.

Let's help them out. It's fun. It's fun. And then as he written this in like cut out letters from other news, like he's threatening them. But he would sign off with his own name throughout the whole time he'd own up to it. my dead body with love. According to Marshall, though, attempts to bring in coarse fish were rebuffed largely because they were compete with trout.

So that just pissed him off even more. Because he hates trout. He hates trout. Fuck you, trout. I mean, there is that double standard there, but trout does have the use of being edible, right? Yeah, edible does feel like a bonus. Yeah.

A bonus. Yeah, can just picture him with a dartboard or the picture of a trout on it. Fuck you trout Fuck you trout First you took my wife Yeah Yeah we go back And it turns out

His wife loved him for some trout She married a trout She married a trout But they're very happy Oh so happy They're the weirdos in their town Isn't that the thing though Surely he can just

Surely with hindsight He can just be happy for her And the trout No But no He still says Fuck you trout Yeah

It's got an absolute vendetta It's sad It is sad It's time to move on I've got to move on. Live your life. Don't become a fish terrorist. Don't become a fish terrorist.

May, this is not the way to get over it. One bad fish. That's all it is, you know? He's going to start writing letters. I didn't want to be a fish terrorist. You made me do this. So by the stage during the 1960s and Smith is into his 40s, as Radio News New Zealand said, he never married.

Well, we know why. Fiancee left him for a fish. At the altar for a fish. He never married. didn't have any kids, what he did have was time, money, and an almost fanatical level of devotion to his cause that he dedicated the entire second half of his life to a one-man mission, introducing course fishing to New Zealand. He probably found it pretty easy to import the fish in the early days.

In the 60s, you could pretty much import any fish as long as it was for your home aquarium. You just had to be like, yeah, yeah, these weird fish that don't exist here. I'm just bringing them in for the land room. But I'm going to need 40,000. I need 40,000 tidlers. My tank, 40 litres. So, should be nice and... Squeeze them in like that.

That's 1,000 per litre. It'll be fine. That'll be right. 40,000 tidlers, please. Smith's home aquarium was massive. His setup was on an industrial level. He also outfitted his Ford Zephyr with oxygenated fish tanks, basically making it a mobile aquarium.

That sounds like an episode of Pimp My Ride. where they come in, they're like, I'm going to install 18 fish tanks in your car. That show is so dumb. So what we've done is we've taken out the backseat and we've put in a couch. Yeah, what do you think? You guys can just hang out. I mean, you can't legally drive it. No, absolutely not.

We've put in 18 TVs. Have you looked at the engine at all? Oh, no. No, no, no, no. We actually took that out to make room for this fish tank. Check it out. And in the boot, you got a barbecue. Yeah, right.

You officially been pimped. Bye So the idea to get all these fish tanks Oxygenated fish tanks in his car meant that he could drive around the country offloading fish in different places and they'll stay alive for days while he drives around

According to Marshall He would liberate the fish wherever he could With or without the permission of landowners He would recruit accomplices Sometimes adults often children In raids on farms, dams and public waterways He started with one of the most damaging coarse fish, perch. Perch were already in New Zealand, having been brought from Tasmania in the 1860s,

and were predominantly found in Canterbury and Otago. They were not widespread for good reason. Perch are carnivorous and have a ravenous appetite. Not only do they eat other fish, but in certain circumstances they ate each other. They just love eating fish. Right. I don't know why that was funny. They're in each other.

That's funny. Smith likely started with perch because he had an easy access to them. In 1905, a population had been legally introduced to Lake Rotaroa in Hamilton City and had survived. Smith, with the help of two local boys, took perch from the lake and spread them around Auckland. So there's a couple of little colonies of fish. It's probably not the word, is it? Schools. Schools.

But basically they didn't exist in New Zealand. But he used this little one to get a start. So he went, fished a few out, enough to make a new school and chucked them in another spot. And apparently they breed real good. And do you think, did he have any concerns that these fish could get out of control that can't everest? Did he have any inkling that it could be a problem for the ecosystem?

Not really. He thought he was doing God's work. Yeah, fantastic. If I just get more fish. Yeah. For the kids to catch. Oh, they're going to get out of control? Even better fishing then.

Yeah. Yeah. Great. More kids need to get out and go fishing. Oh, you've got a problem with me building new schools. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Smith took extensive notes about his exploits and they showed that he released hundreds of perch into the lakes of Auckland in the 1960s. According to Marshall, in 1965, Smith broadened his liberations to include Tench. He started with four, which was enough to establish a breeding stock at what he called his office pond behind his garage. So he'd get him in, get eggs sometimes, and he'd breed him up and then release him. As his operation ramped up, Smith started breeding koi carp, Gambuzia, and Golden Orff. There's so many words I'm going to say wrong today. There's just four in a row.

Right. Awesome. I'm pretty sure I'm saying Otago wrong, and I look forward to the tweets. But it was another fish that became Smith's signature, Rudd. Rudder a stocky freshwater fish with coarse skin and ruby red fins. They are prolific breeders releasing thousands of eggs at a time. I guess the red, maybe that's what you like them, the commie connection. Yeah. They primarily eat aquatic plants, preferring natives over exotics, meaning they share a diet with native freshwater species.

For that reason, Rada is sometimes called the possums of the waterways. That's good. That's really good. I forget that because the possums are native here, so it's kind of cool to see them around. But in New Zealand they were like the most hated pest. I guess they're introduced from over here. If you talk to my dad, they're the most hated pests. Oh, here.

Big time. Big time. You know who I think is the biggest pest in Australia? Humans. All right. Here we go. I don't do the most damage. Sorry to get political about that, but it needed to be said.

Yeah, thank you for your bravery. Thank you. I'm offended, actually. So, as a human. As, yeah, on behalf of all humans. There had been no rud in the southern hemisphere until Smith liberated them into a pond at Wanoi School north of Auckland in 1969. Not in the southern hemisphere.

Yeah. Fuck. Near Auckland, there's a lake called Lake Rotatoa. Marshall continues, it is the largest, deepest lake in Auckland. and for a while the only one dominated by native fish. Among its population were dwarf in Anaga and June Lake Galaxias, both of which are highly rare and on the brink of extinction. Then Smith started his liberations.

In 1970, his notes show he liberated more than 100 Rud into Rototoa. They prospered so much so that 30 years later, Smith returned with Perch in an effort to control the Ruddy domination. Oh my God. There's too many now, so he's like, all right, Before this gets out of hand, I'll just put in some more fish. The perch are the ones that it love eating fish, but also get right out of control. Yeah, it was the kind of thing you just didn't know that you're just releasing a different problem.

Yeah, you're not actually solving much there. Marshall goes on, it proved to be a near fatal blow for the lake. Rudd, which feed on native macrophites, reduce the lake's water quality. Then the perch started dominating the native species. between 2003 and 2011, monitoring showed dwarf in anger numbers had dropped by more than 99%. Whoa. And the species is now functionally extinct in the lake.

Kura numbers had dropped by 90% and common bullies by 80%. So they're all native fish that have just been basically wiped out from the fish that he introduced. Holy shit. It feels like he's obviously got a gift with fish, but like raising them. why wouldn't he turn to these fish that were not like, you know, capo fish? Yeah, right.

They're just native fish there that are already struggling. Why is he, why is he his talent to foster those? It's interesting, isn't it? You kind of wish that someone from the government or from one of the departments that looks after this took him in. And someone even was quite a just saying that. They never used him like they should. He's a guy you want inside the tent pissing out, not outside of the tent, pissing in. And he was outside the tent pissing in.

Yeah, pissing on every single tent. But because he did this, I mean, it's got to be nostalgia, him bringing the fish from his childhood. Yeah. And an imperialist kind of thing as well. I'm bringing over proper English fish to this little colony that I've come to, I guess. I mean, I'm putting words into his mouth, but maybe that's kind of what it feels like potentially.

Yeah, so the native fish numbers are dropping. And this is a very common story. When exotic animals are introduced, they often dominate as the native animals have evolved in a very specific ecosystem without competition all of a sudden. So they haven't built up the natural defense systems. So they're very vulnerable to being wiped out like they have here. Competition between native species is very balanced in an ecosystem,

says Dr. Cindy Baker, a freshwater fish scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. What a badass place where you're like, yeah, I'm pretty important. I'd feel so proud going to work. Not like here. Yeah. You hang your head in shame as you walk through that tour. I need to talk about a fish terrorist. Sorry, everyone. Introduce fish have a significant effect on New Zealand's freshwater biodiversity, Baker says,

particularly in lakes from which they are hard to remove. I found that interesting because I would have thought lakes would have been easier because it's just one spot. Whereas in a river, you're like, you chase them up and down and it goes. Hundreds of kilometers, yeah. Smith was very proud. of what he was doing, even writing letters to newspapers bragging about it, like I mentioned before. One time he wrote, I was delighted to read your article about the Why How River,

becoming an Angler's Paradise, as no one seems to know why this happened. May I suggest the fact that in 1973 I liberated well over 2,000 Rudd in that stretch of river? Maybe that could have been it. Maybe. It was already hard to root for him. Now I fucking hate him. You just It's like Delighted people are enjoying fishing Maybe if you'd listened a few years ago Hey

Well guess what I invented fishing Yeah You welcome You're welcome world You're funny Because he kind of For the most part

He just seems like he's going about doing it And he's doing it for the right reasons But also Everyone Want a little pat on the back here Yeah Huh? Well it'd be good

I mean also I've had to Introduce another species To the late because my original fish have gotten crazily out of control. But still, I'm a hero. Pretty good. That second one is also now out of control. Yeah, that's wiped out.

Yeah, less delighted about that, to be honest. But good fishing. Good fishing spot. Yeah. Although the fish have made the water quality a lot lower, and it's probably leaving to maybe all fish struck. But. But delighted.

He also kept. He kept extensive notes in his diary. His diaries detailed some of the ways he was able to smuggle the fish into the countries once authorities started clamping down on the importation. I really have it's up his shirt or something. One of the ways he got through customs. He dressed up as a pregnant lady. Fake belly.

It's fish. Full of fish. Dressed up as a giant fish. The Srae sees little eggs. I guess that's normal. I'm not a pregnancy expert. It seems that you're having between 24 and 36. children in there.

Thank you. Yeah, that'll be right. I'm a medical miracle. Yeah, little heartbeats, you can see that. Thank you. I am delighted and so was my partner. So one of the common ways he would go about it would be to

walk through customs with fish eggs in his pockets. Okay. It's pretty clever. So he didn't even pretend to be a pregnant woman? No, he didn't. Here's the creativity.

My pockets are pregnant. in a way. Fish eggs in his pocket. Fish eggs in his pocket. And he had a mate, send him in the mail as well. Okay. In the following two decades,

Smith went on to release more than 10,000 rod, 2300 tinch, thousand perch, and hundreds of coy, goldfish, and orfee. And so that's what he released. He's growing that in his home tanks and then releasing 10,000.

That 10,000, you know, exponentially multifying. potentially multiplies. Marshall went on to say, although he typically avoided major waterways, likely because it increased the odds he would be seen, he still managed to populate them with fish. One strategy was to liberate fish into a nearby drain or stream,

which upon the next flood would sweep fish into the river. So, I mean, like you say, he's real clever. He fully understands how it all works. Just get him inside, pissing out. I mean, he's pissing either way. I've got to be honest, I don't understand. analogy, but you both were like, yeah. So I went,

Jesse, you've got to take a piss. You got to take a piss. And this guy's got a tiny bladder. Yeah. It's got a little tidler of a bladder. This guy pisses at fish. Yeah. So do you want that fish coming out of the tent or going into the tent?

Why is there a tent? Out of the tent is what you want. Lock it in. The department works out of a tent. Okay. Fish department. That's a bit odd. Despite not wanting to be.

Smith continued to brag about his exploits. So in one way, he'll be like, I'm not going to do it too publicly and be caught. But I will then write a letter saying what I did. Yeah, dear national newspaper. He was even profiled in New Zealand newspapers a couple of times with his photo. His address. Rudd going well sort of. Oh my God.

And still people are like, where are all these fish coming from? Around this time, authorities started noticing Rudd in their waterways. A species never before seen in New Zealand. Due to Smith's openness, they had a pretty good idea of who was responsible. Okay. Well, that's promising. According to Marshall, not long afterwards in 1974, Smith was prosecuted for the first time. His fish were destroyed.

His tanks were poisoned and his car was confiscated in his marine car. Oh, no. A setback which stopped his liberations for four years. So his tanks were poisoned, did you say? Yeah, so they felt him with chlorine or lime juice or something. have been hard for him. Yeah, that would have been real rough. Or even worse for the fish.

Yeah, awful. Yeah, sorry, should they got the fish as well? And the car, I mean... How's it get from A to B now? Yeah. Exactly. He's going to get a bus. Think about how many fish he could get in a bus.

Yeah. Oh, that's smarty. Now he's thinking. He gets exhibit to pimp a bus. So right, just after this happened, he wrote in his diary, Fasham is long way from dead. Fascism. Fashion.

Fashion. Fashion. Fashion is a long way from dead. Check out these kicks. All right. They've got little fish in that. Disco stew style. It's a goldfish in there.

The fish is dead. Let me read out. I can't work out how to get him out. I think there's seven words in that sentence and I missed one and I read one of them wrong. So I'll say it again. Have a go. Fascism is a long way from dead. Okay.

Wow. These people stopping me from bringing in killer fish. Yeah. fascists. Come on. Despite the setback, he also had a bit of a win around the same time. In 1975, Rudd was declared acclimatized in Auckland and Waccato, according to Marshall, essentially recognising that it was here to stay.

To this day, Auckland and Waccato is the only region where Rudd is established to the extent it is not considered noxious, a feat entirely due to Smith. So they're basically almost like the new natives, you know, they're just here now. Wow. Yeah. Like us and camels. Yeah. Brumbies.

We've got heaps of them. Brumbies. Yeah. Isn't it like Australia's got the most camels anywhere in the world? Something weird like that? Yeah, we've got a lot. I don't think I've ever seen one. Have I seen a camel?

Never seen a camel. Never seen a camel. I don't know. Grow up. Surely. Surely. Right? Surely.

I take that back. Do you know what a camel is? Yeah. It's a type of bag. Yeah. Yeah. And we have more than anyone else in the wild. During Smith's four-year break from releasing fish,

he realized that some of those he'd previously released was spreading too quickly. And this is when again he would release more perch. Right. Awesome. Problem solved. Keep him under control. According to Marshall, it was at this point,

he started falling foul of his few allies. Not only had he returned to spreading perches, He was also releasing coy carp, a bottom feeder, notorious for damaging waterways. He was talking about importing Gudgeon and even flirted with bringing in Pike, a ferocious carnivore likely to dominate any freshwater body it could find. As the decades passed, Smith was getting on in years. That's sort of, I guess that's what happens. And driving around the country releasing fish was a young man's game.

He turned his attention to one last big fish dump. This time, Gudgeon, a species never seen before in New Zealand. It's not known how he smuggled the Gudgeon into the country, but it is known that he bred a population of about 600 inside his tanks on his property. But according to Marshall, that was only the start of his plan. Smith had talked about this plan for a long time. He first mentioned it offhandedly in 1972 in a news article in the Auckland Star.

He's telling the journalist for their stories about it. He must be one of the only terrorists to do that beforehand. He's like the Babe Ruth of terrorism. And then again in 1988, another news article he mentioned it again, 16 years after the first time. But it wasn't clear how serious he was. In the twilight of his life, he had wanted to breed enough Gudgeon, approximately 10,000 to fill a whole lake. It would have been horrific, one of the former officials who had knowledge of Smith's plan said. Luckily for New Zealand's waterways, the plan was foiled with a raid on his property finding the Gudgeon.

I was going to say, because he's... had his tanks destroyed or whatever, taken away from him. And then he's obviously just built them back up. He's built it all back up. Are they not just keeping an eye on this guy? As he writes letters saying, yeah, those bloody capitalists have come in and taken my tanks. Don't worry, I've got more tanks. If they came around now, they'd find 50 of them.

Oh, hang on, I've said too much. But don't. But if you're reading, this is not to be read by those capos. Yeah, that's right. So the raid found the Gudgeon, according to Marshall, the day after the race. the day after the raid, Gudgeon was declared a pest species allowing them to be destroyed. Smith's tanks were again cleansed, leaving him with nothing. The resulting investigation couldn't find enough evidence that Smith had imported the fish,

so he was not prosecuted. A biosecurity report into Guggen later said they were considered likely to become widespread throughout New Zealand in all lowland freshwater systems and were ranked as having potentially high impacts on both native and introduced fish species that inhabit these environments. It's funny. Introduced fish species would be salmon and trout. They're like, we don't want it to have a...

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tourism is pretty big in that sort of area, so... Still being sent to Capitol Hill. We love the taste of it. Smith did tell people he'd already released Gudgeon in multiple waterways, but a search found no sign of the fish, and it is still unclear all these years later

whether or not it happened. He became like a serial killer being like, oh, you think that's all I killed. Yeah. There's heaps out there. Go overlooking the forest. Crazy. Yeah.

He took extensive notes, like I was mentioning in his diary, up until 1988, after one of these big raids, he's like, well, I'm not going to be leaving so much evidence anymore. He's finally sort of a journalist asked him, apparently after that raid, are you going to keep doing this? And he's like, well, I really don't want to be getting caught. doing this. It was winking. Yeah, long answer.

A short answer. Absolutely. Of course. You check my tank. Check my car. Look at that. Look at my backup tank. In the shed behind my house.

He was fined five grand and there was $22,000 in fees he had to pay as well. The fish would destroy car and equipment all confiscated. He lost a couple of cars on different rates. Despite stopping with his note takers, he had to pay. It is widely believed that he continued releasing introduced fish into the waterways. He just decided to no longer leave detailed accounts. From Marshall again, according to his own records, Smith was personally responsible for liberating more than 15,000 fish between 64 and 87 in hundreds of distinct locations.

The vast majority were in the upper North Island between Rotorua and Kerry Carey, but extend as far south as Christchurch. Apparently people would get in contact with him and like, hey, do you mind bring us? some fish to my farm lake and he'd be like yeah he'd just go around dropping them off and driving around giving people fish what a life in 2005 a boy walk past the garage and noticed a weird yabby like creature in the gutter he took it home to his dad what i was trying to think of a word to describe it as i said yabby but i don't know if how wards were that what would you are they crustaceans little little sort of lobstery things yeah crayfishy

prey fishy. Yeah, he took it home to his dad and his dad called the authorities. It turned out to be a West Australian smooth marron. Another species is not found in New Zealand. And without, he has no nostalgic connection to them, I'm pretty sure. Right. I thought that the dad had called the cops on his son being like, you took that from someone else. Give it it back.

Give it back. That's stealing. Arrest my son. Lock him up. The only way he'll learn is if he does 10 to 15 years stretch. honestly, release it into the waterway as yourself, young man. Yeah. And maybe then will forgive you.

But so, Smith, he, these a yabby-like creature. What is it called again? It's called a West Australian smooth marron. Hmm. And, yeah, they just like, they kind of look like a big yabby kind of thing. And turned out Smith was still up to his old tricks at 92 years of age. Oh, my God. The resulting raid found Smith was preparing.

to go again. And apparently it was a 5am raid. He's out with his Zimmer frame, he's got new hips and stuff. Oh, right. And they've got the SWAT team in there. Yeah. Go, go, go. The 30-man team.

30-person team. And yeah, amazing that he's, it was still doing it at 92. A biosecurity report prepared in the following months found Marin had the ability to become widespread throughout New Zealand, invade many habitats, affect ecosystems, and all levels of the food chain. It was a bomb ready to go off, another one that would have just gone wild. What an idiot. Yeah.

But all good things must come to an end, and three years later, Smith passed away. 95. 95. Very, very good innings. Great innings. 80 years in New Zealand, after 15 in even. Wow. According to Marshall, following Smith's death in 2008, authorities returned to his

lair to destroy whatever he had left in his tanks. Lair is a bit. Strong, is it? I love it. I like Marshall's work there. Yeah, that's good. They expected to find more gudgeon, but didn't. Just a few schools of Rudd.

Geez, he loved Rudd. Rudd was his signature. Oh, yeah. Nevertheless, the tanks were drenched with a lime solution to destroy any trace of life, and a sucker truck dealt with the contaminated water, ending the complicated legacy of Stuart Smith. What's a sucker truck? Sucker truck. I assume it's what it sounds like.

Truck that sucks. Amazing. Oh, your truck sucks. You call that a truck? Call it a van. Smith, Smith left behind a bunch of cash. He was still very wealthy all the way through because of that land deal. And in his will, he asked for a book to be written about his life.

Even giving the book a title. Of course. That Pommie bastard. And that's what the book ended up being called. I mean, I don't like it. So the money that he left in the wheel went to an author to write something. Yeah. And that writer was Brian Winters.

So that book's out there available. And apparently it's a great read. I couldn't track it down, even a buy, but it's out there. And it got a lot of attention when it came out a few years ago. To write the book, he went through the extensive notes, Smith himself left behind as well as interviewing friends and foes of Smith. So he got both sides. Supposedly it's quite an impartial story.

But you can tell that Winter's kind of feels for him a bit. Yeah. Winters would later say of Smith. He enjoyed fishing and genuinely felt that spreading these fish around was going to benefit people. I don't think he approached it like some evil ogre thinking, I'm going to do harm to New Zealand by doing this. Summing up, Marshall wrote,

In his writing, Smith often talked about the joy of fishing, particularly for children. He believed New Zealand was deficient in this sense, apart from eels, which he believed were too scary and snake-like for kids. There was no way for a child to grow up fishing in the way that he did. Isn't that the idea of this is how I grew up, this is how I did it. So this is the right way.

And I really loved it. Like there were definitely kids who hated, just found it boring. Yeah, people who take their life experience and extrapolate it to be like, this is a universal what I went through. It's obviously some sort of, it's something we have in us, but it's something that's worth realizing. Yeah. It's like, this is not necessarily the case.

You like fishing and that's cool. That's great, man. Good on you. I like skateboarding. Well, that's why I'm releasing a thousand skateboards into the world. Curiously, Smith himself is not a regular angler in later years, even though an entire coarse fishing subculture had emerged in his wake. So it's out there now that course fishing has become a thing in New Zealand. So he was successful.

He was successful in that way. He came to some of our meetings. He was very well read and didn't suffer fools gladly, said John Joseville. a founding member of the West Auckland course fishing club, which began in the early 1980s. He didn't do a lot of fishing himself for enjoyment or pleasure, but he loved it and he would come to the meetings and that sort of stuff. And he's still advancing his cause from beyond the grave.

Every couple of years, several course fishing clubs receive a 5,000 donation from the S Smith Trust. And last year, the West Auckland Club received $10,000. It pays for trophies and catering and stationary and other things that keep the club going. Wow, does the trophy just say, you're welcome. Having fun fishing? Yeah, I did that.

I made that happen. I made that happen. So to me, I knew nothing of that. I've never heard any about that. No. Because nearly always it feels like it's a mistake when a species is introduced and gets out of hand. Like I was saying before,

the cane toad to fix the cane beetle or someone released a few rabbits to hunt And they go, they spread real quick. Famously now, bunnies do that. But back then, apparently, they didn't know that. Yeah, so it's funny to hear of a guy who's just slowly done it meticulously over decades. Yeah. Yeah, really.

Tens of thousands of things. Yeah. And it sounds like he caused a hell of a lot of damage. Yeah. And it'll, it just will never be the same again. Just because of one person. Amazing. That is insane.

I don't know how I feel about him. I don't know. Yeah, I'm the same. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know. Like he saw himself as the underdog fighting for the people. But it sounds like he had no remorse even when he started seeing things get out of control. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I better rethink this. Yeah. More like, oh, I'll gudge and I'll do. His very sort of blinkers on narrow-minded. Very, like, obsessed. I only saw the positives of his introduction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because he saw it as there were conspiracies.

Anyone against him was working for the salmon industry and that sort of stuff. Right, big salmon. A big salmon. Yeah. Okay. He was a tidler. Yep. With a big story.

Yeah, cool. So, I didn't say who suggested it. Phil while I find his name. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Do not take that camera off me. Okay, now you can take the camera off. I don't stop. Don't stop the music.

No, it's going to be stuck in everyone's heads for the rest of the... I think that's happened already. Their lives. Give us something that will get it out of our heads again. Hey, Mambo. Mamba Italian. Oh, no, that's worse.

That's worse. That's like a gutchen. You know what will never get stuck in your head? Australia's or Leda. Who's ever had the national anthem stuck in their head? No, never. Never. Okay.

It was suggested by Clara in Edinburgh. And. End of list. Clara titled it, Stuart Smith, Liberator of 15,000 fish. That got your attention, right? That got my attention.

I was just searching for New Zealand, to be honest, but that did get my attention. Liberator. Liberator of fish. I do love the idea of them calling him, like the great Liberator, when really he's got fish, put him in a really small tank,

and then release them, being like, and also saying to the fish, you're well. Welcome. I've liberated them from the small tank I put them in. Yeah. After breeding them from eggs that I had in my pocket. It's so funny.

I'm sweating. He's walking through. With fish eggs. Anything to the clear, sir? I'm just picturing him loose. Yeah. Loose in his pocket, getting a little bit to lint on them. Yeah.

They're not going to be good. Oh, sitting next to him for 15 hours on a flight. What are you imagining it smells like? Oh. Fishy? It smells fishy, but also eggy. Oh, those are the two? worse ones.

Two worse mouths, yeah. No, thank you. Damn. But sounds like you got away with it. Yeah, well, he lived a long life and he didn't, yeah, didn't really get particularly punished. Oh, yeah. That was a great story.

Yeah. Absolutely nothing about that. Yeah, like when you hear a, hear a tale and you've never heard anything about it before. Yeah, and you don't know where it's going to go. It's so close. So, like, you think that'd be quite famous. Yeah, I really would have thought he'd be like, an infamous guy. People would be like, oh, I'd be a bloody Stuart Smith.

Yeah, because that's such a rare thing. thing, right? I've never heard of eco-terrorism on that scale. No. Fish terrorists is funny. Decades of solo activity. Do you reckon it's just like Kiwis being too polite to really clamp down? You know, they're like, honestly, mate, can you please stop? They are so friendly.

So friendly. Insanely nice. Now it's time for everyone's favorite section of the show, the fact quote or questions section. It's got a little jingle goes, something like this. Fact quote or question ding. Ding. He always remembers the. ding. Yes, I'm doing this by myself this week. The other two turns out I'm as dedicated to

this show as I am. That's not really true. It's just Christmas holidays. Doesn't matter. Anyway, so the way this works is if you get involved at patreon.com slash do you go on pod on the Sydney-Schenberg Lux Memorial Package Edition, rest of peace, then you can get involved by giving us a factor quote or a question, you also get to give yourself a title, and then we go through a few of these at the end of each episode. This week, the first one comes from Austin Horst, and Austin's given themselves the nickname or the title of the general truck driver, which was actually given to him by Jess on episode 263. There you go. And Austin asked a question, 2020 has definitely not been the year I was expecting,

but you guys have definitely been one of the highlights. The live streams have been real fun. I've luckily not been too affected by COVID, but one of the things that I've missed most this year is live shows. My question is, what is each of your favorite live show, concert, comedy, etc., that you've attended? Sorry, Austin, that I'm the only one who's answering this.

I think maybe my favourite ever show was possibly earlier this year in 2020 before COVID really hit, I think. It was cold chisel out in Geelong and they were supported by Paul Kelly. And it was amazing. It was one of the, yeah, I reckon the best rock show I've ever been to. The other one I think of is when I saw Tism do a secret show to warm up for one of their last. tours. I saw them at the tote. It's probably like 15 years ago and it was amazing as well. So they're the two that come to mind. Sorry that the others aren't here to answer that. I reckon Jess would say a Paul Kelly show probably and Dave would say the Smiths if he ever saw

them which you wouldn't have maybe saw Morrissey. I don't know. I'd love to know that about them as sorry that they're not here to answer it. But Austin does let us know. His favorite was seeing Foo Fighters at Firefly music festival in 2014. Their set was amazing. And when they came out for their encore, Dave announced that for the next five songs,

they weren't the Foo Fighters. He said that they were now a bar cover band called The Holy Shits. A big banner dropped behind the band and they proceeded to play a killer set of Alice Cooper's schools out, Van Halen's ain't talking about love, the Rolling Stones miss you and Queens under pressure, then they closed

the show with Everlong. Cheers guys, he's hoping 2021 goes a bit better than 2020. Cheers to you, Austin. Thanks for your support. Thanks for that question. If you ask again, feel free to ask that of Dave and Jess specifically.

Geez, I'm lying in bed. So if any of my pronunciations seem lazy, that's why. This next one comes from Drew Foresburg. He's also asking a question, but let's see what title he's given himself first. Rice President. That's so silly. Cheers, Drew.

And Drew's question is, I happen to have a keen interest in learning facts about 1966 and North Carolina, especially regarding athletic history. Is there a podcast you can recommend for me to hopefully broaden my knowledge on these subjects? Oh, Drew, you have, you've got lucky here that I'm the one left because I know some really good facts about these and I don't know that Dave and Jess do. In 1966 is actually the year that the St. Kilda Football Club won their one and only VFL slash AFL Premiership.

So far, I should say, that's a little asterisk there. Any year now, the second cup will be coming. And that obviously excludes the Wizard Cup and other preseason and not grand final premierships that were won, you know. 1960 also the year that English football brought it home, the World Cup, that is. And there was another fact I read about recently. I think the Chicago Bulls maybe were.

maybe that was the year they were founded let me google this uh Chicago Bulls yeah 1960 hey and that links nicely into my next fact which is about North Carolina um did you know this apparently they're fire engines or something are blue and other ones are red. Also, Michael Jordan played there and he wore his North Carolina University shorts under his Chicago Bulls shorts, meaning he had to get bigger shorts for Chicago Bulls. And then all the other players started copying and they all got big baggy shorts. That has come full circle now and they're wearing short shorts again. Fashion, huh? It's amazing. But yeah, thanks, Drew. Thanks to take me on a walk down memory lane there. Appreciate that very much.

This one comes from Julian Barnes. Julian is the second chair triangle player for the DoGo On in studio orchestra. Just in case they forget the ding, which we never do, but it is handy to have you there as backup. Thank you so much, Julian Barnes. Julian also has a question. And his question is, welcome to Dogo Oven, the Dogo on Cooking Special episode. we join Matt, Jess and Dave each cooking their own signature dish for our live studio audience. What are you making for us today, guys?

Okay, well, I know Dave would be making some sort of bean related thing. Probably a bean pie combining his two loves. Bake beans in a pie, can it be done? Dave's going to find out. He's not the man to find out. He will almost definitely set the kitchen on fire. Jess, what would Jess be cooking? She can cook.

I know she has, she likes to cook Mexican sometimes. So I'm going to say she's cooking some sort of burrito with margaritas. And I'll be cooking. What do I want to cook? I'm going to cook one of those cakes that says multiple layers and they're red, white, black, colors of the saints. So you got red, and that is going to be hot chili cake.

Then you've got white, sort of like a vanilla cake, and then black. What's a black food? I guess like a coffee, really heavily roasted coffee, or maybe even stout, stout beer flavored cake. That's a showstopper right there and then. Thanks to that question, Julian. And finally, we've got Tessa Chilcott.

who is, of course, the president of useful solutions to problems requiring creative thinking. Wow. That's a really handy person to have around. And Tessa has given us a quote, and her quote is the most commonly used quote of 2020. You're on mute. Or, ah, you're frozen, aren't you? Bless Zoom. Thank you, Tessa.

Hopefully those quotes don't need to be used too much from next year. The other thing we like to do is shout out to a few other of our Patreon supporters. Just normally comes up with a game and as she isn't here, I thought probably the game she might have come up with would have been where we would take an animal from our Patreon supporters hometown or at least home country and introduce them in large numbers to the New Zealand waterways. Okay. So first up, I'd love to thank from Swansea in Great Britain. It's Sari John Jones. Seri John Jones. So for the wait, Sari John, he's been a Patreon for a long

time and due to my stupid system here, it slipped through. I don't want to blame Patreon for their spreadsheet. being a bit out of whack, but look, I'm going to, I'm going to blame them for it because it is their fault. Okay, so Swansea is in Wales and I'm looking at Welsh wildlife and apparently they've got dolphins there. So we're going to introduce dolphins from Wales into the waterways of New Zealand. Huh? You reckon their trouts are doing well? Well, I reckon these dolphins are going to dominate. Absolutely eat up all that gudgeon. Gudgeon's a fun word. Thank you so much, Sary John Jones. I'll only do a few. We normally do nine of these at the end of an episode,

but because I'm doing a solo, I might maybe just do them, just do three. How does that sound? Does that make sense? All right. So I think dolphins are do great. It's about time New Zealand had some dolphins in their lakes. They've probably got them around the oceans, but any in the lakes? I don't know. I don't think so. The next one,

uh, next patron I'd love to thank is from New AGO in MI, which I reckon is Mississippi, Michigan. I'll find that in a second, but it is Scott Lannning. Thank you so much for your support, Scott Lannning. We appreciate that very much.

I'm looking up. New Ago, M.I. is in Michigan. New Ago, Michigan. All right. I wonder if Michigan's got any sort of animals. It's got notable people, including Roy Barji, composer and pianist, and Jack Nichi, musician and arranger. I think a couple notable people there. All right, I'm going to look up Michigan, Michigan fauna. Let's see what they've got here. List of fauna in Michigan. A Wikipedia page, fantastic. All right.

Custaceans, dipteria, hemiptera. I don't know what any. They've listed it all in bloody Latin. Mollusks. All right. Oh, here we go. Blue Dash. Let's see what this is.

All right. So a blue dasher, it is the only species of the genus Packad Diplax. It is very common and widely distributed through North America and into the Bahamas. But in particular in Michigan, and they're dragonflies. Great. And they, blue dashes live near still calm bodies of water such as ponds, marshes, slow moving waterways and ditches. Oh, these are going to take off. These are absolutely going to ruin New Zealand.

the blue dasher with a fantastic name. And yeah, Scott Lannning is going to dedicate his life to making that happen. He's going to be dropping him off by the bagload. He's going to be taking blue dasher eggs in the pockets of his pants and breeding him out the back of his petrol station. Good work, Scott. You're really going to absolutely destroy some stuff. Well done.

And finally, let's see. Who's my final shout at going to be today? scrolling down. Final one for today is Conno Simmer from Atascadiro in California in the United States. All right, let's see. Californian, is this fun hearing someone Google in real time? California fauna. California fauna is fun to say.

Fauna of California All right Okay so finally we are going to be dropping off Or not we sorry of course This will not be we This will be Connor Simmer We'll be dropping off Black Bears into the waterways

Of New Zealand Black bears Oh now the dolphins are in trouble I don't know how well these dragonflies are going to do Black bears, yeah, they're going to change things up a bit. I've seen them swim, but what Connor's going to do is he's going to introduce them as an aquatic bear. First aquatic bear in New Zealand. I think they haven't had an aquatic bear before, but well, they do now.

So good work there, Connor. And, yeah, New Zealand, you've got some really exciting things to look forward to with dolphins, blue dashes. and black bears coming right up maybe black bear could be the the cake uh the black strip of the cake that i have in my st kilda layer cake anyway um oh and finally what we like to do is bringing people into the triptitch club but maybe i should save this for when david and jess are around i wish you could answer me some of you are saying yes please just save it for then and others say no matt we want to hear it now let us in I know who it is.

I may as well do it because it's three years today since they signed up. So the way you get involved in the TripTitch Club is if you're signed up for three years plus on the shoutout level or above, you get inducted into the TripTitch Club. And the way this works is I'm going to have to play all these parts. Normally Dave hipes you up and then Jess hypes up Dave. And I'm at the door. I'm lifting the velvet rope letting you into the club

I've got the door list right and Jess comes up with a cocktail and an hors d'oeuvre and Dave normally books a band Dave who've booked this week we've booked fish which makes sense the band Fish

are playing live in the trip ditch club Jess who what kind of horserves have you got what kind of cocktails shrimp cocktail okay that makes sense I don't know what that is

that makes sense. I also don't know really who the band Fish are, but that feels right. And fish cocktail, which feels like a food thing and a cocktail on one, so that's done. So nothing left to do now but to bring in this week's inductee, which is from Victoria, Australia, in Sea Lake, it's Bron. Hey, Bronn, more like, uh, yeah, Bronn is, uh, have a, have a nice time in here, Bronn. Woo, yes. Good work. I'm absolutely losing my mind. All right. So that, hey, Bron, hopefully that's all you ever dreamed of with your triptych induction. But that is all the time we have for today. Thanks so much for listening in everybody.

We'll be back next week with a great report from Jess Perkins. Until then, we're on social media and all that sort of stuff. Do go on pod. Do go on pod.com is our website. but Patreon is dugornpod.com slash dogoon pod. Wait, hang on. Patreon.com slash dogoan pod. And yeah, hey, get in touch. Hope you have a great Christmas and end of year.

It's sad to see the end of 2020. It was a fantastic year, as I predicted early on in an early episode. I stand by that. Anyhow, until next week, we'll see you all. Later's. Goodbye. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates.

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