Salt Story (14 page)

‘Well if that's a Good Friday, I'd hate to see a Bad One.' Salt watched Fisheries drive away from the boat ramp.

On Thursday night we'd set nets and crab pots as normal, in anticipation of the Easter Sunday markets. As far as Salt was concerned, the Fisheries laws on public holidays worked the same as for Saturday – all gear out of the estuaries within two hours after dawn. The only problem so far with this Good Friday morning was the thunder and lightning.

The last time we fished during a lightning storm, it started off a gorgeous, balmy afternoon. Sure, the eastern skies were gunmetal grey but it was so hot and still that we didn't bother with wet-weather gear. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt; Stormboy, even less. It was one of the rare times I got him out on the water; ‘We're just going out to set a few nets. Back in an hour. C'mon, son.'

We motored out to the mussel farms over the glass-off and threw the first buoy overboard. I took care of the tiller, Stormboy sat amidships and Salt played out nets over the stern. A ripple played across the water.

‘Wind'll be up in a moment,' said Salt.

Within five minutes lightning forked into the sea around us, forty-knot winds blew waves that only a gnarly nor'easterly can throw up and the rain was hurting my face. I put the motor in neutral and we let the wind blow the boat over the water, no propulsion needed to play out the nets. It started hailing and soon I was picking icy stones from my hair the shape of glass shards and as big as my thumbnail. Salt
held a fish box over his head and let go of the net. Stormboy covered himself with a tarp and sat huddled like an old plant. I stayed on the tiller, cowled in lengths of shade cloth. I couldn't make sense of where I was or even which direction we were heading in because visibility was only about five metres. During that squall, despite our mad laughter and lightning streaking into the sea, and bald, naked fear and hail hitting us like broke middies in a bar fight, not one of us said out loud, ‘I'm a bit worried about being the highest point in the harbour and sitting in an aluminium boat.'

The storm roared through the inlet, through the channel and out into King George Sound. By the time we'd thrown out the last buoy, the sun shone again. We cruised into the jetty to see a shore red with gravel from the car park. A very dry Aboriginal family spilled out of their misted up van and ventured to the jetty with their rods to catch some black bream.

So, on Good Friday, the sheet lightning was a little easier to bear, bouncing harmlessly from cloud to cloud. But the nets were crammed with undersized crabs and the wind was blowing the boat off the nets. I had to pin it against the gunwale with one foot and unmesh angry crabs at the same time. You should try this one day. Go on.

The hail started and it got to the point where I could only laugh because my face was too numb to hurt. It took two hours to unmesh those crabs, so we were way over our welcome in the inlet. We still had to pick up the crab pots. I was beginning to suffer for lack of an early-morning coffee.

Finally, we pulled into the jetty. I saw the white ute parked beside Salt's. Oh nice ... Fisheries officers. Some eye candy on a morning devoid of any joy so far. Salt gave me the keys to his car. I welcomed them as I shuffled wetly off the jetty. They both looked at me strangely.

I wondered about that look as they stood, arms folded, waiting for me to get the boat up the ramp.

Then they proceeded to confiscate the whole catch, all the nets and all of the crab pots. The nets should have been out of the water before sunset
previous
to a public holiday. They arranged to interview Salt and gave him a summons for the magistrates court. Then they drove away, their ute groaning with booty.

Salt made a show in court, for fishing illegally on Good Friday.

Sitting in the courthouse waiting room is always a condensed study of the human condition and this day there was even a bit of claret spilled (and some spitting). Everyone was summoned to appear at nine o'clock. Unfortunately on this day, sixty-three people were summoned to appear at nine o'clock and the room began to resemble the wild party that had brought most of them there in the first place.

Brad, resplendent in a suit and polished shoes instead of his usual Super Fisheries Officer Guy fatigues, came to sit with Salt, me and Kermit. Kermit had been nabbed for having his nets in the water too many hours after dawn. It's funny really. Brad as prosecutor should have been the enemy today but faced with the rest of the room, he was a kind of brother. There was still plenty of gossip to cover and Salt wanted to know a few things about the cockle market.

People hugged and chuckled babies. The Aboriginal liaison officer, a humorous woman, walked around talking everyone up. ‘Well!' she shouted. ‘It's good to see there's more men than women today. At least the girls have been behavin' themselves a bit better, hey.'

A young woman wearing several hoodies, stained white tights and black vinyl boots lurched around before finding a seat that overlooked the stairs. She seemed very much alone and just holding herself together. Mothers dressed like real estate agents ushered in their naughty daughters. A whole family wore black fedoras, sharp suits and smiles. A middle-aged man sat alone on the plywood chair, brooding. A couple
of local bikies, sans colours, hung around the water fountain, chatting to a woman – black skirt, black jacket, black hat.

She walked past the waif in white tights, doubled back and sat down, too close. ‘I know what you were thinking and I wouldn't, if I were you.'

White Tights laughed, too loud and unsteady. ‘Ahh, haw ha! You got it. You knew what I was thinking.'

‘Yeah. Don't ever think about trying to trip me up again.' She stayed in her seat and looked at White Tights, her eyes all glittery.

White Tights started squirming in her chair. ‘I did not try to trip you up. I was thinking something else. How do you know what I was thinking? You don't know what I was thinking at all.'

People stopped talking.

‘She tried to trip me up,' Black Hat said when the Aboriginal liaison officer raised her eyebrows.

‘So what are you doing sitting next to her?' she retorted. ‘Got your legal aid sorted?'

Black Hat stood. She must have been six foot tall and built like the proverbial. She looked at the clipboard. White Tights stood up and started calling her a bitch and said she so did not try to trip her up. Foam worked its way between the gaps in her teeth and settled into the corners of her mouth.

‘Sit down darling,' Black Hat was in total control. She was even smiling. ‘Go on, you know you can do it. You've obviously got some problems but you can sit down. Just bend your knees and put your arse on that chair.'

People tittered. White Tights sat down and Black Hat sat next to her again. The Noongar woman went away shaking her head.

I went downstairs to get some fresh air, and because Black Hat was cultivating an audience I didn't want to be part of. Outside I talked to the bikies who said they had been given incorrect move-on orders whilst drinking in one pub and been arrested at another. The Aboriginal liaison officer came
outside and cadged a quick cigarette from the taller bikie, ‘Before I gotta get back in there.'

Two young men, one bristling with an orange prickle haircut, came outside. ‘You shoulda seen that shit. That crazy bitch started throwing punches at yer mate in the black hat!'

‘No way!' Everyone started laughing.

‘For crying out loud,' said the liaison officer. ‘And I just told all the women in the room they were better behaved than men. I'll shut me trap next time.'

Salt's case was deemed by the magistrate as too time-consuming for a petty sessions hearing with sixty people waiting. She wanted to think about it some more. Kermit, representing himself, pulled out his doorstop of evidence and his packed lunch. She booted him out too. Adjourned until Friday.

Postscript: it was expensive.

Expensive for Salt anyway: when Fisheries took their original statement from Salt, they asked him why I was aboard on the offending morning, presumably in an attempt to charge me as well. It is on the official record that, according to Salt, I was carrying out my duty as a lightning rod.

‘Hi Chief. How are we today?'

As soon as someone in uniform approaches Salt on a jetty, I see him get antsy. That kind of pseudo-casual greeting usually signals the beginning and end of all pleasantries. Trevor is the new marine safety officer. He's new to town and has just met Salt for the first time. Poor guy.

‘So ... I'm just checking that your boat meets all the current safety requirements.'

‘No bastard's had to rescue me yet.'

‘Do you have an EPIRB? Lifejackets? A gas horn? What about a fire-extinguisher?'

‘We're just checking crab pots mate! Just over there.'

‘We've got a bailer,' I pointed to the red plastic bucket in the bow. ‘That's all we need right? We're in protected waters and we don't have an inboard motor.' I was right. I was so bloody right.

Trevor sighed and shook his head. ‘This is a survey-exempt commercial vessel. Recreational maritime regulations are not applicable to survey-exempt commercial vessels.'

But I saw a little twitch when he said that, as though he were mentally fumbling for his absent clipboard. ‘Are you sure about that?' I eyeballed him.

He wasn't sure and now I'd embarrassed him in front of Salt, his prize. It wouldn't be the last time we saw Trevor.

We returned to the jetty from setting the pots again a few days later and he was waiting for us, clutching a clipboard.

‘He's been at me on the phone for days now,' Salt grumbled. ‘I'm gonna swear at him, if he gives me a hard time.'

There are several kinds of residents at the boat ramp by the slipway. There's a pair of steel-capped boots that have been living there for quite a while now. There are some old men who sit in their cars all day, drinking beer, chatting through wound-down windows and looking out to sea. Then there are public officers. Trevor was eating lunch when he saw Salt motor up. Gold.

He waited patiently while Salt took a few runs at driving onto the trailer. Once she was winched and on dry ground, he started.

‘So, Chief...'

Salt started too, launching straight into combat mode. ‘No I don't have your fucking EfuckingPIRBfirefuckingextinguisher ... but would you like to see my flares?'

Trevor took the flares and examined the expiry date. ‘These are three years and two months old. Two months out of date.'

‘They are guaranteed for six years.'

‘The maritime safety regulations state–'

‘I don't give a fuck mate. You've been doggin' me all week. I know who I'd feel
safety
with on a boat and it's not fucking you. I was fishin' before you were born, probly before yer dad was born. What's yer fucking problem?'

‘I don't have a problem,
sir.
' Trevor leaned the clipboard on the deck to cross a box. His unbuttoned shirt flapped open to reveal the hairy bulge that held his lunch. ‘I'm just doing my job. Your flares are out of date.'

‘You'd be out of date if you didn't have that uniform. And get that fucking clipboard off my boat. It's not a fucking table, mate.'

I've seen Salt carry on like this before. Marine park reserve meetings. Grievous setting nets over his. Grievous going near the flathead spot when we are already there. Anything to do with Grievous at all really. The thing is, Salt doesn't actually
lose his temper, he
cultivates
his temper. Today, he was trying to extract maximum entertainment out of the inevitable infringement notice.

‘Do you have a ship's whistle or gas horn?'

‘I can whistle quite satisfactorily thank you.'

‘A person's whistle is not enough, sir. Do you have a mechanical means of making a noise?'

‘Fuckin' oath. It's called punching something like you in the head.'

Trevor crossed another box. ‘Can I have your date of birth please?'

This was just too much. ‘Can I drive this car away now?'

‘No, you can't sir. I observed you approaching the landing–'

‘Oh. You
observed,
didya?'

‘And now we must complete this interview. Can you give me your date of birth please?'

‘Can't remember. Too young at the time. Hey – was your father a Dutchman?'

And on it went. I began to feel sorry for Trevor because Salt was enjoying himself.

‘I've only been done for assault once – and that was a CALM officer, twenty years ago,' he told me as we drove away, the infringement notice already on the floor of his car. ‘Pity really, I only shoved the guy. Could have really gone to town on the bastard and got the same charge.'

Every old man in the car park waved. They've never done that before. It must have made their day. Salt pulled out his mobile phone as he neared the main road. ‘Now. Let's ring the shop and tell them we're bringin' in a box of crabs.'

I drove out to meet a Windy Harbour fisherwoman on a day when gales and hailstones battered the whole south-west of the continent.

‘Trayback Landcruiser. White.' Ms Mer said to me on the phone that she would meet me by the caretaker's shed. I drove along a puddle track past the colourful fishing shacks that stood side by side like uncertain teenagers, until I found her.

‘It's the wild woman of Borneo!' she said, leaning out of the ute and taking off her black wraparound sunnies. I could have returned the compliment. Ms Mer was older than she sounded on the phone but her eyes were clear, pure blue like a sun-glad sea. She'd spent so many years at sea that her irises could have been made of the stuff but there was also a bit of steel in there and something else, a humanity, a steady reckoning, kindness. Under her beanie, snow-white hair stuck out in little tufts.

We rumbled past more shacks. ‘They keep all us professionals out the back here, out of sight,' she told me later. ‘Right at the end of the track. We have to keep all our gear out of sight too, in case it offends the reccies.' She meant the recreational anglers, inland farmers or city dwellers who lease shacks for their holidays. Solar panels perched on reccie roofs like raptors and hot-water systems were wrapped in tarps for the winter to keep out the salt spray. Signs were nailed by the front doors:
Gone Fishin', Hideaway, Merv and Averils Castle
or
To the Manor Prawn.

I was impressed by the lack of signage to Ms Mer's shack. That and the monster of a diesel Lister chugging away in the
shed. ‘Gotta have it. There's no mains power out here. I need it to make ice mainly.' She makes block ice to keep the fish cool. ‘Been through a few of those motors since 1971, three, maybe four...'

Her garden was smooth beach stones and succulents. Long white socks hung in the garage next to her ‘changing room' where the fishers got out of their smelly gear. A carpeted ramp led to the door of her house. She showed me into a room with huge windows where I looked out over sand dunes to the island sitting in a blustery, choppy sea.

Inside the living room there were many shelves of books: hymn books, Lynda la Plante, more crime fiction, Australiana, Reader's Digests, Hammond Innes, poetry. High on one shelf was a yellowed photograph of a young Ms Mer and a fellow nurse from the Vietnam War, grinning into the camera with urchin innocence the way people do in black and white photographs. The Vietnamese child on the stretcher was swathed in sheets and bandages and smiling too.

The Everhot was firing and beneath it two lizards lolled on the warm tiles. A polished kettle hummed on the hotplate. She turned off the radio. ‘No good news anyway.' A ticking clock. The roar and roar of that wild sea.

‘Cuppa tea? Coffee?'

‘I'd love a coffee. Missed out this morning.'

She sniffed when I said I wanted sugar. ‘Sugar!' She hunted around for some. ‘I don't have sugar in anything. Never have liked the stuff.'

Ms Mer had made barley, bacon and mushroom soup, some coleslaw, pickled beetroot and a plateful of crumbed herring morsels and she placed it all on the table along with some slices of bread and butter. She sat down opposite me, the teabag still dangling from her cup, and fixed me with her blue eyes. She'd taken off her beanie and her white hair framed her like a pixie cap. ‘I hope you like the soup. You're not vegan or anything?'

‘I'll eat anything.'

‘I'm not such a good cook,' she shrugged and smiled.

‘This is lovely! It's a feast.' I broke apart the crumbed herring with my fingers.

‘Never married, you know. Got out of that one nicely, hey? Never was a man who could cook and clean for me while I went fishing. I don't really care about houses. Houses are just places where us fishers live when we're not aboard a boat.'

She showed me a photograph of a classic West Australian fishing boat, slung up on a lift and about to be launched, surrounded by men in flannelette shirts. ‘My old boat, the plankie, I sold her and bought the one I got now. That's just after I bought her. Fibreglass.
Tupperware Girl,
I call her. Not a plank boat. Plankies are a lot of work. When you get them out the water each year you gotta paint them, caulk them again...'

When Ms Mer was two years old and living on the island, her father would put her in a wicker basket and lower her on a rope down the long walls of granite to the groper hole. He was a strong man and a lighthouse keeper. He would climb down, once he'd safely deposited his child in the nestle of rocks, and together they burleyed up crabs and abalone roe.

Some of the groper were as big as him. He'd climb back up the rocks with the tracer over his shoulder, hauling the monster after him. ‘We used to eat fish every day. That and rabbits. Loads of rabbits on Eclipse Island. Austin only came out every few weeks with supplies; firewood, kero, flour, all that stuff, so we ate whatever was there.' Her childhood was spent on the lighthouse islands, from Eclipse Island on the south coast, to the Northern Territory.

The family also worked sharking at Hamelin Bay and rarely went past the island for prey. It is a popular holiday spot and I think netting is now banned there. ‘So many sharks!' She chuckled. ‘Right where everyone swam and mucked about.'

She showed me a photograph of her as a kid, surrounded in shark carcasses slung from racks and lying in the sand at her feet. Old photos of huge sharks, the images peeled at the edges, sometimes a date and some other details neatly typed
on a separate piece of paper and glued beneath the fish – I see these pictures often when talking to the older fishers. Far from macho posings, the commercial fishers tend to take pictures of women wearing shady hats and aprons or children with bleached, wild hair sitting astride a monster that they hooked off the beach or dragged, tail first, out of the salmon net. Women and their daughters have always been part of the action. ‘I was snigging salmon up the beach when I was two years old,' said Ms Mer.