CHAPTERS

I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

Thirties

the most beautiful woman in the world

In the Thirties my mother was my parent and I missed her if she wasn’t there. We shared housing with single mothers - fathers were absent. I didn’t miss a father, as I was unaware of the concept.

My mother never spoke of him and I wasn’t aware he had died. I had very little concept of a father’s role in a family, no impressions of the interaction between father and mother, no male guidance. This is the way it was.

I consider my mother did a good job of raising us during the Depression, even though we were separated on a few occasions by her commitments as barmaid or cook in various country hotels. I thought my mother the most beautiful woman in the world, with a wonderful singing voice and I idolised her. She was also the only figure of authority I knew and what she said must be obeyed. It would not have occurred to me to question or argue with her. Whatever chores she set out for me, I did.

Forties

romantic illusion

On reaching puberty my awareness of females awakened. They were a mystery but very desirable. Unfortunately I was painfully shy.

The boy’s books I had read up to this time did not in any way prepare me for the transition. I had developed an image of girls that placed them on a pedestal. My fantasies were of ‘knights of old and fair young maidens’, where I rescued the girl and won her gratitude. This romantic illusion lasted far too long into my teens, with girls becoming more desirable and my fear of rejection increasing. I formed friendships with other boys who I now suspect had equal fear of the opposite sex. We joined the Police Boys Club in Fremantle and took up boxing, wrestling and weightlifting. We rode our pushbikes from Fremantle down as far as Pinjarra to shoot rabbits. We started drinking at about age 17 and would have liked to start earlier but knew we wouldn’t get away with it. The minimum drinking age at the time was 21.

i met the young lady

After returning from Kalgoorlie I met the young lady I would eventually marry. Her name was Elsie Johnston, or ‘LC’ as I always called her. I thought she was very attractive, a happy fun-loving person who made me feel good to be with. Her interest in tennis was something I couldn’t share as I was too shy to risk failure in front of her friends. We had an on-off relationship for quite a while. I think she had reservations about my drinking, and her mother had reservations about her daughter going out with a boy who rode a motorbike. From the age of about 17 I’d been going to the pub after work each night. I think the drinking and mateship of this period was a cover for my lack of social skills with the opposite sex.

surrogate father

In the Forties I felt uneasy about increasing responsibility. I still did not miss my father, because he did not occur to me. Had he been there, perhaps I could have talked things through with him and I know now the benefits could have been real. Because I lacked experience and a father as a role model and did not have the benefit (?) of TV sitcoms to show how life’s problems can be solved, I lacked confidence but tried not to show it. If I had a problem, I gave it a lot of thought and put on a front of knowing what I was about. Rather than ask about something, I would keep my eyes and ears open for clues and work things out myself. Perhaps I also lacked communication skills. Looking back now, I think my employer Tom Woodhead was important in my development. He was my surrogate father without either of us being conscious of it. I had a lot of respect for Tom, though I may not always have shown it.

Fifties

you’ve made your bed

At age of 22 I had known LC for about five years. We had not been a full time ‘item’, but seemed to drift back together after short break-ups.

She occasionally mentioned a guy in competition with me who wanted to take her out, this later being upgraded to wanting to marry her. I decided not to risk losing her and one evening took her to a secluded spot on the river foreshore and proposed; I was accepted. I nervously asked Mr Johnston for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He said, “yes” and words to the effect “you’ve made your bed and now you must lie in it”. I didn’t think this was quite appropriate, almost a warning against marriage, but I found out later he had been as nervous as I was and had downed a couple of stiff drinks before I arrived.

the patriarchal system was alive and well

In this decade of the Fifties LC and I started a family. I know now how inexperienced I was for this role. I was only comfortable with my baby daughters when alone with them. I could then nurse, cuddle, play, feed and change their nappies happily. When others were present, I was reserved. It may have been lack of confidence in playing the role of father. Perhaps my reluctance to publicly show affection was because I was a male adult and they were little girls. It may have been insecurity regarding gender role modelling - “I am a man and men are tough and not sissies.” This was still a period when the patriarchal system was alive and well. Male film star heroes never displayed emotion publicly. The sum total of this is that although I loved my children, I was not overly demonstrative.

‘reinvent the wheel’

I believe there are some who think that fathers don’t need training or role models; saying it is a natural instinct with which they are born. If they had a father as a role model they have had that influence. From the Fifties, the media moved into every household, TV providing sitcom role models ad nauseum. This powerful medium educated in every aspect of life. I did not have this advantage. Never having known a father, I had to ‘reinvent the wheel’.

Sixties

commute

When I returned to my family I discussed the future with LC. I wanted to move the family to Geraldton, LC wanted to stay in Fremantle.

My motivation for moving centred on access to the fishing at the Abrohlos. LC’s wish to stay put is best known by her, but I believe it centred on friendships developed and proximity to family, also being comfortable in the home she had established. I made the case for a better income and home in Geraldton and LC went along with it. We made no plans to relocate at this stage. Home was still in Forrest St Fremantle and I would have to commute for a time.

abrolhos islands

The Abrolhos islands are low lying and sparse in cover, some barren rock. They can be beautiful at sunrise, even more so than at sunset if there is no wind and the sea is tranquil. The real beauty is under the sea with the corals, fish and other sea life. Visibility is usually quite good and there is an enormous diversity of reef and coral formations. When I had to unsnag a craypot, I’d put on mask, flippers and snorkel and dive down. There would often be something new to see. Occasionally a disembodied pair of human-like eyes would look at me from the reef. It would be a large octopus blending into its surroundings. ‘Occys’ are very shy and not at all aggressive, but on the one occasion when I tried to catch one for bait I learnt they are very strong. When I grabbed him, four tentacles wound around my arm, leaving four to hang on to a rock. As I was free diving with limited time down there, I decided to let him be the winner. Having dived in many places around Australia, I’ve found the Abrolhos offers diving equal to or better than anywhere else.

wild winter storms

With LC, Jo Anne and Leonie, I enjoyed the Island seasons more than the rest of the year. Being without telephones and TV and with newspapers up to five days old by the time we received them, we were isolated from the problems of the world. From May onwards with the lower catches, the carrier boat arrived every four days, relieving the work load. At this time of the year the weather can occasionally turn nasty and I would take some days off. We would often take this opportunity to rug up and walk around the island beachcombing. Wild winter storms can toss up an interesting variety of things; shells, coral, sometimes an item covered in barnacles that has been floating for ages and finally found a resting place. It was an idyllic time. I believe LC and the girls also were happy there,……

on a roller-coaster

When we returned to the mainland we made plans to move to Geraldton the following year. Once again LC was not too keen on this move as she preferred the Metropolitan area but she went along with it. The season had been moderately successful and I now had the money to build a bigger boat. I talked this over with LC and the bottom line was I had to return to Geraldton almost at once to start on a hull, because Sid Liddon had offered advice and the use of his workshop. Our discussions were quite civil, no yelling or screaming, but I see now there wasn’t a great deal of choice for her, I was on a roller-coaster, heading for a life of fishing out of Geraldton that would take me away from my family more and more.

as if by magic

The weather was perfect and we anchored almost on top of the wreck. It is the dream of most divers to dive on important historic wrecks and if the wrecks had carried treasure as this one did, then it is even more exciting. When I slipped into the water I was at first surprised to see how little remained recognisable as a ship. It was like a narrow depression in the reef running approximately north and south. At the south end it was deepest at about 10m, rising to less than three metres at the north end. Cannon and anchors were the most visible evidence of a wreck. Soon I started to see things unnatural in nature underwater. There were mounds which were stacks of bricks covered in growth and the more you looked the clearer these shapes became. There are very few natural things under water that are straight and I could see the straight outlines of articles or timbers overgrown or with reef build-up. On the bottom there were patches of white sand. To search in this clean white sand you only had to wave your cupped hand close to it. The light grains of sand whisked away and any heavy object was exposed as if by magic.

finding treasure

I found many small items such as musket balls and coins, the coins generally worn, covered in a gritty brown concretion and looking like nutty biscuits. In finding and handling these items there was an incredible feeling of experiencing history. Here were the things last used more than 300 years ago. Close to a cannon on the west side of the depression I found a couple of good coins in a black powder lump. They obviously had been protected from movement as they were in beautiful condition, shining underwater, then I came up with more, probably from the chest Pelsaert had been unable to salvage on his return. Soon we were all working in this spot and recovered quite a few good coins. Most of these were rijksdaalers (rix-dollars) of sterling silver weighing 28gm, big coins by any standard. When we called it a day the freezer hatch on the boat was covered in lumps of material and coins. We divided all of this wonderful treasure into five heaps, put each lot in a separate bag, shuffled them around and took a bag each. Every schoolboy dreams of finding treasure and there were some very happy schoolboys there that day.

the formative years

In the decade of the Sixties, I was away from home and the family for long periods, in total for more than half the decade. When I was at home, my time seemed to be consumed by boat and gear maintenance, particularly during the freezer boat period. These were the formative years for my three daughters. In the late Nineties, my daughter Marilyn told me that when I did return from fishing she only wanted to see me off again because I was too strict. I don’t see myself as a strict disciplinarian with my children, but I recall trying to make sure none of them started smoking. I tried to warn of the problems it causes later in life; I tried reason about the cost. I remember the glazed look on some of their faces during these lectures. I know now that once a young person has started smoking, lectures and reasoning are totally ineffective. Later when I knew they were smoking I tried to ban it. If I caught them out, privileges were withdrawn. I had smoked myself until some time in the Sixties when I gave it up cold turkey. I realised I couldn’t tell the kids not to smoke if I was. LC was unable to give it up until diagnosed with lung cancer in the early eighties. I was unsuccessful with the smoking issue with my daughters and unaware it would be a minor issue compared with drugs in the Seventies.

Seventies

paved with silver

When I first set eyes on this mass of coins, hundreds of thousands of them, there was a surge of adrenalin. On the north side of the mound was an opening along its length forming a narrow cave.

The floor of this cave was paved with silver, an unforgettable sight. Over 250 years, limestone sediments had filtered into all the gaps between the coins and the sea and marine borers had removed the wooden boxes they’d been stored in. The movement of the sea had spread the total mass of coins and sediment along about 3m of this cave. It probably had been protected for some time by the wreckage during which the sediment had set hard. Many coins were on edge and all you could see of them were the thin straight lines of silver polished by the action of the sand in the surf.

drowned in the North Island anchorage

Fatalities in the fishing industry are not uncommon, but when they happen on your doorstep they have a sobering effect. During May of the following Island season a deckhand, Peter Sweeney, was drowned in the North Island anchorage. At around 9 pm, John Fitzhardinge came out to Banyandah and told me about it. Peter and a companion had been ashore to the social club and while returning to their boat, Batavia Road, had clipped another boat and flipped. Peter’s companion had swum ashore and raised the alarm, saying he couldn’t find Peter in the dark. The fishermen ashore had gone out in their dinghies with spotlights and searched the area, with no result. As nothing more could be done at night we decided to search underwater early next morning.

island loo

The toilets were set on stilts over the edge of the island and were the same as the old pan type but without a pan. One problem with this set-up was on the frequent windy days you couldn’t drop the toilet paper down the hole as it would blow straight back up again. One solution was to take a handful of small stones to weigh the paper down. I decided to eliminate this problem by panelling the stilts with marine ply down to the water making it a chute. I did this at low water to get down as far as possible. When the water covered the bottom sheets of the chute, the wind was no longer a problem. Unfortunately I had not considered the hydraulic effect of the wave action. As a wave came in, the water rose in the chute creating air pressure that blew you off the seat. As the wave receded it created a down draught, trying to suck your bum tight into the hole. I cut a baffle into the side next day creating a pressure relief valve.

Aagtekerke expedition

Early in 1972 while LC was in Geraldton looking after the girls; I was in Perth working at the fibreglass factory building Zelma; I was invited to dinner by Hugh and Marilyn Edwards. Hugh invited me to take part in an expedition to search for the wreck of the Aagtekerke, which had vanished in 1726. Like many of the larger Dutch vessels engaged in the spice trade, the Aagtekerke was carrying a fortune in silver in addition to general cargo. If we found her, it would be a case of ‘look but don’t touch’ as legislation was in place protecting historic wrecks. We’d be eligible to claim a reward as principal finders, but if successful could not expect more than to recover expenses. The real reason was the excitement of finding a historic Dutch wreck.

parapsychology

During the 1973 season at Big Pigeon Island I had my only experience of parapsychology. Aunt Emma, my father’s sister, lived in Ravenswood, near Pinjarra, with her daughter Dorothy and I would see her only once in a year. At Easter I dreamt she had died. The dream was so real that in the morning I felt I should contact Dorothy, but I decided not to because it may have been upsetting to her either way.

When I came to town in July, I rang Dorothy and after chatting for a while casually asked how her mother was. Dorothy said Aunt Emma was fine now but had a stroke at Easter and nearly died. When the ambulance arrived the attendants said Aunt Emma had no heartbeat and they thought it was too late. However, using the life support gear on the ambulance they’d brought her back. I was shaken by this near-death experience with my closest relative in Australia. I’d never dreamt about her before and hadn’t seen her for six months.

As a dedicated agnostic I needed a rational explanation. I read up on dream research, close-kin awareness and mental telepathy and found that it is normal for people to dream during the period of rapid eye movement. The main function of this period of sleep is to file in memory cells all the day’s events, something akin to cleaning up your computer hard drive by shutting down correctly. Similarly, dreaming seems to be part of cleaning up the mind ready for the next day. I won’t go too deeply into close-kin awareness, but research has been done on it and I’m sure many have heard of a mother who is somehow aware of losing a child before being told it has happened. Thirdly, there have been many experiments in mental telepathy and it now seems accepted that it’s possible. Arch Whitworth, when stationed in Derby, saw examples of the ability of Aborigines to know of events which happened hundreds of kilometres away long before an explainable source could have told them. Bringing these elements together, dreaming, close-kin awareness and mental telepathy, it could have been that Aunt Emma, who was at an elderly stage where short-term memory is lost but long-term memory comes to the fore, felt the end near and thought back to the Thirties and of her only brother and of me, his son. Combine this with strong mental telepathy and close-kin awareness; the thought that she knew she was close to dying was planted in my subconscious, to surface during the night as a dream.

free a whale

During the next Island season I had the opportunity to free a whale trapped in the shallows inside Long Island of the Wallabi Group. Lindsay Baskerville, who worked the area, told me of a whale entangled in one of his pot-ropes. The area was bounded by shallows except for one small passage and a set of floats was very slowly circling an area the size of a football field. Every so often the whale surfaced to ‘blow’ and breathe. It must have come in through the passage on a high tide and tangled the pot rope around its tail. For a time the whale would have been dragging the pot like an anchor until the pot broke off. But with the rope and floats round its tail as an encumbrance it wouldn’t have been able to judge the tide and passage to escape.

I didn’t have my scuba gear with me and I couldn’t use a hookah because a dinghy with outboard would have to follow me and would frighten the whale. I slipped into the water with free-diving gear and an underwater camera and waited for the floats to pass by. The visibility was not too good, perhaps as a result of the thrust of the whale’s big tail stirring the sediment in a confined area.

I grabbed the floats as they went past, took a deep breath and started to pull myself down the line. As I came closer I saw that it was roughly 13 metres, with a body like a steam train. The rope had two turns around the base of the tail and had chaffed the black outer skin off; it was white for about 60cm. The whale, alarmed at my presence, increased its speed, the thrust from its huge tail creating a turbulence I could make no headway against. I had to work my way back up the rope. On the surface getting my breath back I realised it might be possible to work the rope off by jerking it - this worked - and after five minutes the whale was freed. I didn’t get any pictures, but it certainly felt good to ‘Free Willy’. (No, I haven’t seen the film.)

marcel proust

Here are twelve generations spanning almost 300 years compressed into a few lines and this thought by Marcel Proust is appropriate:

"In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed . . . . So it is with time in one’s life." (Remembrance of Things Past)

Nineties

relationship

In early 1990 I decided to do something about finding a partner. Since the break-up with Zoe I’d avoided any relationship, keeping fully occupied with work to prevent the risk of a disastrous union formed on the rebound.

But I now felt enough time had lapsed and I had come to terms with it. I wrote a ‘wish list’ of what I’d be looking for in a partner and although I binned it long ago, it went something along the lines of (but not in order of priority): “About my age; non-smoker; moderate social drinker; healthy; intelligent; interested in some activity outside the family; ‘green’ values but not obsessed; down-to-earth values (as opposed to ‘Sloan Ranger’); sense of humour; engaging personality; positive outlook.”

So, how do you go about finding such a person? It takes time to find answers to the questions when you do meet someone and a critical factor is whether she will be happy with you and will she want you?

I ruled out pubs and clubs and went to an introduction agency. At the interview I was shown a fee schedule (meet x women per month for $y ) and a questionnaire, asking mainly about wealth, earnings and assets - or the lack of them. I decided this outfit’s priorities were too material and physical.

My next idea was to advertise in a newspaper personal column. With this in mind I read through some ads to see how others had gone about it. One thing that struck me was that men to 40-odd desired physical attributes (“well stacked” etc), while mature-age men looked more for compatibility.

The New Millenium

sensitive to signs

In April 2000, tragedy struck our family. I had a phone call from Marilyn who told me that Leonie had died.

As I write this, it brings back the tears. She was only 41 and there was no indication she was about to die. It never occurred to either LC or me that we’d outlive any of our children. Nothing prepares you for the grief of losing a child.

LC and I had been innocents in the woods regarding drugs. We didn’t recognise what was unfolding before our eyes. In the Nineties parents learned to be much more sensitive to signs that their children were starting down the road to disaster, which is probably the only time it may be possible to get them to stop. Once they become addicted, all your wise words will fall on deaf ears. The best book I have read about warning signs is Gone to Pot, by Raelene Allen. If I could do it again, apart from my absence as a father, I’d read Allen’s book, cover to cover, before my children reached puberty. Leaving it until they were in their teens could have been too late.