Open Writing

A couple of years ago I rode my bicycle from Geraldton to Kalbarri, with a head wind all the way, spending a lot of time in the granny gear to save my knees on the hills.

We had overnight stops at Northampton and at the Murchison River Station near the old Galena lead mine, then a rest day at Kalbarri before returning to Geraldton along the new coastal route via Port Gregory.

Among the things recommended by the West Australian Cyclist Touring Association, who organized the ride, were a visit to the Murchison River Gorge and a whale watching expedition into the heaving Indian Ocean off the mouth of the Murchison.

We boarded a catamaran and set off into big seas. The whales were into private whale business and did not want to be watched. They’d dive deep as soon as we got within a cricket pitch of them.

Glassy-eyed, I sat rigid in my deck chair. A friend, Maria, lay face up on the floor, her breakfast already heaved overboard.

Sailors we weren’t.

I was born near the River Tyne with the smell of the North Sea in my nose and the scream of gulls always in my ear, but I’ve always been a landlubber. I’ve sailed round the south east coast of Australia in an Indonesian three- masted barquentine, the Diwerutji, and I’ve sailed over the sea to Skye in my brother’s boat, the Caol ila, fortified by a glass of single malt, and I once sailed for six weeks in the Orion from Tilbury to Melbourne, but truly it wasn’t my thing, though my family would have been sea-faring people originally.

We still have the Viking rhythms in our speech, and our ancestors probably included Captain Cook, a former Tyne pilot. My mother once said we were related to Lord Nelson, but then who wasn’t connected to that philanderer, not necessarily on the right side of the blanket?

Henry the Eighth started it, decreeing that we all had to eat fish twice a week. The king wanted a navy, and being Defender of the Faith, knew how he could get one. If we all ate fish twice a week, somebody had to go to sea and catch it.

Our business on the Tyne was coal, which was shipped by rail or donkey cart or in wicker baskets to small lumpers on the river and then taken to boats to be cargoed to London town - coals from Newcastle. Our contribution to the capital was warmth and pea-soup fogs from the fumes of the burning coal.

The last seamen in my family were Tom White, who married Aunt Ruth, Bob Chambers, who married my father’s younger sister, and Jack Adams, my mother’s mother’s brother’s son. Jack finally came ashore at Fremantle, Western Australia, initially as a harbour pilot. Later he became Harbour Master and received further promotions. Tom and Jack were master mariners, ships captains for the Blue Funnel line.

Jack started as an apprentice seaman on the Cheldale during the Depression. His first voyage was carrying coal to West Africa.

He was 16 years old. The food was mostly stews, potatoes, curries and salt fish. The ship had been trading in the tropics for several years, so there was no shortage of weevils and maggots in the bread, and cockroaches in the cupboards.

During his time on the watch, he’d learn by rote the 30 articles for prevention of collision at sea from Browns Nautical Almanac.

He went ashore to visit his first African town, 275 miles from Lagos – Burutu, 20 to 30 straw huts, with a few shops selling kerosene, candles and straw ware.

The coal was unloaded with baskets into a little stockpile ashore.

When Jack came back to the ship, to his amazement he noticed standing by the stockpile two naked women, one very old, the other in her teens. Apparently they had been respected in their village as the midwife and her daughter until the midwife failed to deliver three babies successfully. When the third baby died, the midwife and her daughter were stripped of their possessions, pronounced witches, and only allowed to scavenge outside the town.

After discharging her coal and cement in the West African ports, the Cheldale would load up with mahogany logs, palm kernels, cocoa beans, palm oil, and an occasional bird for the London Zoo.

When I was a little boy, we used to sing a sea shanty –

Thoo shall have a fishy on a little dishy
Thoo shall have a haddock when the boat comes in

These fish weren’t caught by factory ships but by men working in family trawlers in the North Sea, or the North Atlantic, all wearing blue jumpers with their own weave which identified them to their kin.

All wore heavy boots and none could swim – never needed to, so why learn because once overboard in the North Sea the water is so cold it will stop your heart in a few minutes. Better to go straight down to Davy Jones’ locker – hence the heavy seaman’s boots.

While I was so glad to come ashore after my whale watching off Kalbarri, I couldn’t bear to write a line about it. And I don’t know much about the modern fishing industry, though I’ve heard it said that amateur anglers catching anything less than a ten pound snapper at Kalbarri would normally throw it back- takes up too much valuable freezer space.

Using my cousin Jack Adams’ experiences, however, I could probably do an interesting piece about running petroleum from North Eastern Russia across the Baltic through the U-boat blockade of Britain, in total silence with never a light showing. Jack used to look dreadful when he came into our bar after those runs. He was that chock full he couldn’t talk about it.