Murray cod

Now that we’re back in lockdown, my memories of that meal are helping me get through: noodles dressed in housemade XO sauce topped with a glistening, raw scarlet prawn and its roe; hot-and-sour Murray cod with fermented chile and drifts of herbs; a few slices of dry-aged slow-roasted duck with taro and caramelized onion soy rice.

Aboriginal occupation in the region goes back 10,000 years, and I found stone artefacts, a bone point and a 5,500-year-old Murray cod otolith whose size indicated a fish about 2.2 metres long.

And in Australia, letting more water pass through dams in spring could stop rivers drying up while the eggs of Murray cod mature7.

The catalyst for outrage has been viral videos of hundreds of Murray cod floating dead and being displayed by angry locals.

Murray cod is an icon of Australian waterways and one of the world’s largest species of freshwater fish.