The Mattens - photo

[Couta]

I have been reading with interest Waza's stories about the infamous Mattens fishing spot at Dover Heights in the 1980's. I lived a few streets away in the 1970's, in fact just above The Block, another great fishing spot, a little further north of the Mattens. I used to fish the Block, the climb was almost as hairy as the Mattens, but there was a long wooden ladder in the most difficult section and then a shorter ladder further down. Despite that it was extremely dangerous. I shudder when I think I actually climbed down it but I was only a kid in those days.

One day I met up with a mate from school and we walked down to the Mattens. He said let's climb down. For some reason we did. When I saw the section with the ropes I couldn't believe it. Somehow I made it down and when I got to the bottom I was almost sick when I thought about the climb back up. I did make it back up, I had to, there was no other alternative. My arms were red and swollen and sore for days. 

One of Waza's mates, Steve Davies, told me that he won a fishing contest fishing the Block. He was a bit sneaky, he said he went down there the night before the comp with a heap of loaves of bread and berleyed up all the bream in the area. Next day he came back and cleaned up. I think Steve put in the big wooden ladder.

I went past it in a boat a few years ago and the ladders were long gone (thank goodness, it was way to dangerous).

Waza's stories reminded me of a book I bought in the 1980's called "Sydney's Top Fishing Spots". The cover says "288 pages...with more than 1000 fishing spots around Sydney". I still have the book. Many of the spots have photos, including the Mattens and I scanned a photo of it. (Note that the text below the photo has the description of the location wrong). Its the only fishing spot in the book with the title "Not Recommended".

 

[Yowie]

I fished with a couple of young blokes in my late teenage days in the Royal National Park at one of their secret spots. The first rope down was held in place with a ring they had cemented into the rock face. Faaarrrrk.

All gear was lowered down from there, then across and down a few rock ledges and a long drop on another rope to the rock platform. If you hooked a decent fish, it would have been an effort to get it back to the top.

A couple of times they could not fish the rock platform due to the big swells running, but the boys said that 2 big bream lived around there and in the big swells these bream would be seen scooting over the rock platform on the bigger waves, grabbing food. An estimate by them of easily 5 pound bream, and they were not fibbers.

[wazatherfisherman]

3 hours ago, John R said:

I have been reading with interest Waza's stories about the infamous Mattens fishing spot at Dover Heights in the 1980's. I lived a few streets away in the 1970's, in fact just above The Block, another great fishing spot, a little further north of the Mattens. I used to fish the Block, the climb was almost as hairy as the Mattens, but there was a long wooden ladder in the most difficult section and then a shorter ladder further down. Despite that it was extremely dangerous. I shudder when I think I actually climbed down it but I was only a kid in those days.

One day I met up with a mate from school and we walked down to the Mattens. He said let's climb down. For some reason we did. When I saw the section with the ropes I couldn't believe it. Somehow I made it down and when I got to the bottom I was almost sick when I thought about the climb back up. I did make it back up, I had to, there was no other alternative. My arms were red and swollen and sore for days. 

One of Waza's mates, Steve Davies, told me that he won a fishing contest fishing the Block. He was a bit sneaky, he said he went down there the night before the comp with a heap of loaves of bread and berleyed up all the bream in the area. Next day he came back and cleaned up. I think Steve put in the big wooden ladder.

I went past it in a boat a few years ago and the ladders were long gone (thank goodness, it was way to dangerous).

Waza's stories reminded me of a book I bought in the 1980's called "Sydney's Top Fishing Spots". The cover says "288 pages...with more than 1000 fishing spots around Sydney". I still have the book. Many of the spots have photos, including the Mattens and I scanned a photo of it. (Note that the text below the photo has the description of the location wrong). Its the only fishing spot in the book with the title "Not Recommended".

 

Hi John R we fished the "Block" a few times while the ladder was there. To me, just as scary as the Mattens, as the old ladder was both rickety and no longer pinned solid to the wall. We used to run 2 ropes down and just use the ladder's rungs to step on. From memory every second or third rung had a thin, solid iron rod underneath the wooden step as reinforcement, but the ladder was really old (before Steve Davies time I'd think) and plenty of rungs were broken or cracked through from being out in the weather.

Once down, there was a great gutter all along the front and we bobby corked about 4 ft deep for Bream in there. As the tide got towards high, massive Blue Groper would surf a swell over and into the gutter to feed and were clearly visible, even from above on the cliff top.

First time at the Block, we were actually corking off the top and when the second fish fell during the winching-up process, they put a rope around me and sent me down the ladder to retrieve both the fish. 

I'm pretty sure the council removed the top of the ladder after a fatality on the lower section, where part of the ladder broke off the wall and the climber tragically passed away.

Other places along there I've fished are "The Logs" and "Cave" at Rosa, Rosa Gully itself, including the "Green Ledge", George St, the Lighthouse (worst climb) both Gap's, Murk, Buckler, The Boot, to name a few.

Never made it to "The Alters" or the "Pillbox" near the Chapel, except in a boat.

If you use the search engine and look up "Reminiscing, Mulloway, Kingfish and the Murk effect" then scroll down in replies to the post, there are two 90 second video's of Mattens footage showing the climb in better detail.

Good to hear from another rock hopper and thanks for posting the picture

Regards Waza