Spotter Plane, Spy Plane

There is a 'things to do list' that's gone astray; put out crab pots (check), do paperwork, pull up milk thistles, do more paperwork, go hunting along the beach for a missing crab pot bouy. The list went astray because this morning, I heard on the radio news that someone in Albany and Hobart hired out some planes to a public relations company, Omeka Communications, in late December - and the public relations company is the client of Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research.

Just like back in the good old days, spotter planes are being used for whaling. However, the difference here is that the Japanese are not spotting whales, but those balaclava-clad sea-ferals, the Sea Shepherd fleet. Basically, these are spy planes, rented by Japanese whalers from an Albany business. For those who don't know; Albany was the site of the last working whaling station in Australia. Thirty years later, Albanians are completely enamoured with our cetacean brothers and sisters. Oh, the irony.

There is nothing illegal in this latest chapter of the saga on the high Antarctic seas. Anyone can charter a plane. The International Whale Sanctuary is only a name, because the Australians and a few other countries said so. It's not internationally recognised and not signed off. The Japanese and Norwegians can do what they like there. And the whales being hunted are not a species recognised as being endangered. My feeling about this? The legality does not matter. Hunting down these animals and then killing them slowly - very slowly, too slowly - for a product that is not essential to our own well being, is just fucking immoral, and the kind of behaviour that belongs to the days before synthetics made whaling obsolete.

At the markets on Sunday, I stopped for a coffee break with Rooster. He used to work on the whalechasers and is still a patched up member of the local bikie gang. These guys put down their drinks at the White Star one day in 1978 and rode out to the whaling station. The were all whalers in those days and their intention was to tell the rabble who'd collected there - the GreenPeace protestors, ex Prime Ministers and Catchalot and Co. - that it was about time they fucked off.
Thirty years and a bit of perspective is a great thing. "Well, we couldn't keep doin' it, could we?" He laughed. "There's something wrong with killin' an animal like that. It's like killin' dinosaurs or something. And it was all gonna end, anyway. The company was fucked, quotas cut down to nothing and market prices down in the dumps. Greenpeace did the company a favour, you know and covered themselves in glory at the same time."

Today, Bob Brown asked where the Federal Government's own surveillance vessels were. You know, the ships that were to be sent out to keep an eye on the whalers.

'"It's outrageous that the Japanese have stolen such a march on the conflict between the whaling protesters and the whale slaughterers," he said. "And the Australian Government is doing nothing about it and is allowing Australian facilities to be used against the whale protesters."

The Federal Government says it has seen the reports.'

This story interests me (and shut down my day of paperwork quite successfully) for three reasons. Firstly, the Antarctic is one of the last spaces on the planet that has not been entirely carved up by humans, nation states or real estate agents. In the conspiracy theory party that is my head, I wonder whether plying trade in waters over a century or more may deliver a kind of de facto native title over those waters. It's unlikely that the Japanese whalers are actually making a profit from their killing, considering the quotas versus operating costs. The Australian government are watching these guys very carefully, but it feels like they are still quite unsure as to what to do about it. In other words, the Australian government's dilemma is about jurisdiction, maritime boundaries and the potential of Antarctica's unplundered resources, such as oil, gold and Patagonian toothfish.* This isn't about the whales at all.

Secondly, I grew up in this town and saw men dismantling whales the size of buildings with razor sharp hockey sticks, along with the accompanying stench of death. Being into history a bit, I also have access to some of the best records on ancient and modern whaling in the world, second only to records at Nantucket and Sandalfjord. My favourite plaything is a wrecked whalechaser!

Thirdly, like most people, whales just do something to me. Seeing a whale, no, meeting a whale while out on the water, or standing on a rocky headland, helps me understand the size and diversity of this planet we live in. They are a magical presence, a physical evidence of the journeys and memories they have undertaken in their work as the record keepers of the earth.

Today, I keep having these scenes played out in my mind. A little charter flight office in Albany. Perhaps they received a request so distanced as an email or a phone call, where a mysterious company requested a charter flight over Antarctic waters. At some stage, at the hangar, did the aviators twig as to what was really going on? Maybe they knew the whole time. It's an interesting scene to dwell upon, and to wonder if the story will go any further than single sentence on the news. Not long after I heard it today, the story of the Albany spotter/spy plane was eclipsed by the sinking of a Sea Shepherd boat, by the whalers. Rough waters indeed.

In this image provided by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a whaling protestor throws a bottle of butyric acid (rotten butter) at the Japanese harpoon whaling ship Yushin Maru No. 1 in the Antarctic Ocean, Monday, Feb. 2, 2009, as the Sea Shepherd helicopter flies overhead. (AP Photo/Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Adam Lau, HO)

Above quote in green text is from the abc website,
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/06/2786195.htm

* An example of this hypocrisy is the Navy chasing a decrepid toothfish poacher all over Antarctica for nine days, because those toothfish are 'our' fish. We don't hunt whales, therefore there is no economic advantage in sending out the Navy to watch foreign whalers in Australian waters.

A Midsummer Dream

I have this bike. She's outrageously cowgirlish, because a nice young man has been overhauling it for me and somehow, he just intuits that I really wanna be a cowgirl. He's added tooled leather chaps to the front forks, fringed the saddle and somehow modified the back end with a single Chesterfield couch, the same yellow and black of Pauline Hanson's dress.

I'm off to the studio, right in the middle of town, where my family live and all of our cats and dogs, including some kids and some cats and some dogs that just arrived and never left. The studio is glass-fronted and the glass smells of Windex.

I'm sailing over the hill, around the roundabouts of Aberdeen Street. I know I'm way over the limit, because it's New Years Eve and I've got that flying, soaring feeling before the heaviness. Ahead of me, blue lights flash. They are always ahead of me, I never actually see the police car, just that shadowy, blue loom of lights. I fly over the hill on my beautiful cowgirl bicycle and know that they'll be picking someone else up and I'll just be able to sail past while they are busy.

But at the next roundabout, they're waiting for me. Three police cars, their lights spinning like one of those Red Dot battery operated disco balls, are clogging the road. But I'm fine ("not", a little voice says) because I'm riding such a beautiful bike.

A blond policewoman, coiffed, a kinder, prettier version of Bronwyn Bishop, white gloves and even a handbag, she pulls me over. All the blokes begin to look rather interested when they see my bike. But I'm fine. (Not.)

Everyone is surprised, including me, when I blow 6.945. They were too busy admiring my bike, checking out the tooled leather chaps, and having their pictures taken sitting in the Chesterfield couch behind the fringed saddle. They all look at each other, not quite sure what to do. "We've never booked anyone for being this drunk on a bicycle before."

But they book me anyway. Not even the production of a cute black puppy from the fringed saddlebags works. NicePretty BronwinBishop Policewoman collects her winnings, from all the wagers they'd made on the state of my sobriety, and smiles gorgeously at me. I know exactly what I blew - 6.945 - because she gave me the little white plastic thingy and the number is written on the side, like a pregnancy test, but in numbers, not colours.

I put it in my coat pocket because, I think, I might just go home and blog about it.

More Stolen Yarns

More stories from fireside folk.

Donna Toa, (no fire) Otago University student flats:

My Dad was a beautiful man. Scandinavian. He looked like Paul Newman. He taught us to be strong girls. Once we were sitting on the verandah, when we lived at Port Chalmers, and a woman walked by, legs up to here, tiny, tiny skirt and high heels and stockings.

Thinking back, she was a prostitute, you know. And my Dad, sipping his cup of tea, laughed away to himself, just laughed and laughed. You know, so many men would be whistling or ogling that woman, but he just laughed. It was that moment, one of those moments, as I remember him, how he related to me and us as girls and women. 'Cos he could see the humour in her situation, struggling up the hill in her high heels.


Dayshift Barmaid, Fireplace, The Royal George, Albany:

We had a bloke, he was here everyday. His wife was pregnant and so was I (though I wasn't showing, so nobody minded too much). I was six months gone and it was my first child. When his wife went into labour and had the baby, this man spent the whole time in the bar. He went on a week long bender at the pub and only left to get a feed and have a shower.
I was so pissed about this!! He should've been with his wife (even though he was in no condition to visit the hospital, unless it was for a liver transplant).
Finally after days and days of him basically living in the bar, my boss, the publican (his name was Priest, truly. And everyone told him their secrets) had a word with him, a quiet sit-down near the fire.
Here was me, pregnant, thinking this guy was an asshole, that he was soaking up all the congratulatory drinks. He even had a black eye, from some bullshit fight. That day he told Priest that their last child had been stillborn and he thought it was his fault because of some kind of genetic weird shit. He was too scared to go near the hospital or his wife, in case the same thing was happening all over again.


Donna Toa, (no fire) Otago University Flats:

I knew the worth of money when I should have been too young to know. I was having sex for bangles. Since I was seventeen, I was under the thumb. Four babies. My Dad saw me one day, ready to drop Jani, still breastfeeding the boy. "You're getting cannibalised!" He said.

Four babies and one husband who screwed me into the ground with violence. It's like I've got the same thing as those Vietnam vets - the amount of times I thought I was gonna die. I've had a shotgun in my mouth, been beaten and then kicked in the head when I was down on the ground.

You don't just get better when it ends. You can't just turn a switch and be okay from that day onwards. All of a sudden, there is freedom, from him and his control, and it's just too much. It's almost as bad as the violence. I didn't know how to deal with the freedom. There were too many choices. I made a lot of wrong ones. I lost my way for years. And he kept the kids because I wasn't strong enough to stand up to him. So my life was even looser - nothing to tie me down.

Once I was in a bar - I used to drink with some of the Mongrel Mob - and this young blood started trying to chat me up. I must have been about forty then, four kids. He was just growing some bum fuzz on his face, he was a boy, and he kept coming up with all these raspberry sweet lines. I laughed at him, just laughed and laughed, like my Dad did, at that woman walking up the hill in her heels. I thought it was great! And pretty funny, and then this young blood punched me, broke my nose, made a real mess of my face.


Toa Sister, Fireplace:

A short little man used to run the market arcade where I worked. His family were all religious, of some sort. He built a lovely little bric-a-brac shop for his wife, in secret, and presented her with this shop on the opening day. I don't know whether she had any say in her new job. He seemed to think that's what she'd always wanted and I never heard anything else.
She dressed the same as the rest: long skirts, demure shirts, very well behaved. The rest of us tenants were ferals, the normal kind of people you see running market stalls.

Every day, the short, little man and his demure, pretty wife ate lunch at the Mexican stall, run by an Iranian family - a feisty Iranian mother and her son and daughter. The son claimed to have fought in Beirut and could quote Robert Burns, whilst standing on a laminex table, full of Fruity Lexia, I saw it. Small, dark man. The quiet, beautiful daughter was very dark, lithe limbs, springy, black hair.

When the whole thing fell apart, when the centre finally did not hold, when the stall holders mutinied against the religious callings of the managers and the old man had a nervous breakdown, the short little man told me of his affair with the beautiful Iranian daughter.

"She showed me a new life. I had a new blood surge into me. I was besotted, entranced. We went skinny-dipping. I've never done that before. I tried to stop seeing her, but I just couldn't. It was like I was addicted and she was the opiate. Her mother knew, of course. Her mother knew all sorts of things ...
Do you believe in magic? Like Black Magic?" Here, the devout handclapper stares at me across the table, his eyes pleading with me to absolve him. "I think that family did something to me."

"I don't know anything about that stuff," I told my former, quite destroyed boss, "perhaps if you believe in it, then it works."

He told me then, that every evening, how he would drive out of the markets and swear he'd go home to his wife and two young sons. But then he'd look up to the mountain that overshadowed the town, to her house. The house glowed with light, it shone like a beacon and he just drove towards it. Out of all the houses that collar that mountain, that house just glowed and glowed. He'd be at the house and in her bed, before he even knew what he was doing. "Her mother did it. I know she did. She knows all about that stuff."

The next thing ... well you know what happened. All came crashing down and the Iranian family shot through overnight. Rent on the shop not paid and they were long gone. Just like that. The good little wife,when she found out, she was gone too and the two sons, all in one day.

That afternoon and the next day, and for the rest of the week, after he told me all that stuff, when I looked up to that house at the end of the day - it did not glow. It stood like all the rest of the other houses. I couldn't even see it any more. I look up there now and I don't even know where it is.

That house had huge panes of glass. When I think about it, when his affair with the Iranian girl kicked in, the sun was directly opposite that house, at five-thirty, when he drove out of work. A few weeks later, the sun had moved on. Pity, he didn't.

Other People's Yarns

Sitting around a fire that burns inside an old washing machine tub - the holes glowing bright with flame in neat diamond lines - and listening to other people yarning; this must be one of my favourite pastimes. Aussie sees my ears prick and that hungry gleam in my eyes(fireglow, red wine and a ripping yarn) and laughs at me. "Okay, Sarah," she says. "You can have that one. I just gifted you that tale."
Other tales are stolen, and that's the thing about writers and storytellers. We are thieves.

Maxine on the Horses' Birthday, Fireplace.

When I was a teenager in Perth, I used to gatecrash all the other school balls. I'd stand in the entrance, all dressed up, and tell the teachers that I was the school councillor and discus champion. I went to all the balls, it was great fun.

They always let me in. They always did, not becuse they were gullible, but because I understand checkpoints and how to get past them.

I was a child in Northern Ireland. At checkpoints, as a ten year old - "Do you have any weapons?"
"Of course I don't! I'm ten!"
But they never found out that I was clad with guns. I had guns taped to me, from me nipples down to my waist and then from the top of my thighs, down to me knees.

Our whole street was a collection of one massive family, living in separate houses that were all joined together through paths over the rooftops. All the sympathisers used to hide there, moving between houses from the rooftop paths.
At our back door, there was a British soldier. He stood there with his gun, day in, day out. We fed and housed the sympathisers. Then we'd go to the back door and give the British soldier his supper as well.

Toa Sister, Fireplace.

We lived right next to a prison, in that window period when the prison moved between minimum and maximum security. During that time, men escaped a lot. One man, to get into prison, he poured petrol over some lovers and raped the woman at match point. To get out, he forged a key to the outer quadrangle in art classes, then he banged a nail into his wooden leg and he used it to climb over the razor wire.

Mum took me to her walk-in walkrobe that day and showed me where they hid the guns. She reminded me how to load and clear it. She showed me where the ammo was stashed. She was worried that an escapee would find me or my sisters alone."If he comes, just aim for his guts," she told me. "Don't worry about fancy head shots. I know you'd be able to do it. Sometimes, I think your sisters would be too afraid, but I know you would be able to do it."

Charlie, Fireplace.

This fire is so smokey and smoke makes me laugh and laugh, wink, wink, say no more hey. Can I hug you? I'm feeling so stoned and happy and I'm a huggy bear really. I've been in prison, just done three years, moved all over the place. What did I do? Killed three people, ha ha. Okay I'm a bit of a fibber. Actually I defrauded the tax department a few mil or so. Set up all those bank accounts and moved money around. Might as well have killed a few people. Prison is full of people who wanna fuck you up the arse. No - really. Not just a rumour. What did I do? Well, look at me, sister, I'm blonde, blue eyed, cute and cuddly. I learnt how to fight. Just start punching on. I could take anyone here down in seconds. I know how to fight. Learnt how to box. It's the only way out. I learnt how to fight young, really young, because I was abused at a Catholic boarding school, when I was a kid. So I may look soft, but I'm not. Was I raped at boarding school? Well, yes. Next year, I'm going to London, where the school is. I'm testifying, against the priests. A nice holiday, don't you think? All paid for. I used to be such a cute, blonde-haired boy, but I'm still a huggy bear, you know. Yes please, I'll have another toke of that.

Allan, Kitchen Table.

A few years ago my father and I travelled around New Zealand. He was a dying alcoholic and I'd just broken up with my missus, so we were just a fine pair, him and me. We'd get to talking, one of the first times we really talked like that. He'd crack one of those crappy N.Z. beers (which one is it? Speights? Tui? Can't remember) first thing in the morning and I'd drive and we'd just rave on about our fucked up lives.
That country, the South Island, everywhere you go, it's the sort of country where you'd take a woman to propose to them. Just me and Dad though, no proposing going on there.
We got a flat tyre out near Milford Sound somewhere. Dad sat in the car and kept drinking and I changed the wheel. I heard a big car, like an eight cylinder, pull in. I could hear Dad talking to someone, but I just kept working.
Then I heard this voice, "You want a hend, Cuz?"
"She's right mate, nearly done," I told him. Then I turned around from the jack and looked up. There's about eight of the fucking hugest men I've ever seen and they're all tattooed. One bloke, one half of his face was almost black with tattoos and the the other half had streaks of blue back from his nose across to his ears. Fuck man, you should've seen those guys.
They all just sort of looked at each other and laughed. Then three of the guys picked up the front end of my car and held it there. I changed that tyre pretty quick!
They said there was a good pub down the road, then they all piled in this black Holden Statesman and took off. Dad and I went to the pub. It was like something in the wild west, with those swinging doors and all dark inside. Music cranking and the place was packed full of Maori's, drinking straight from perspex beer jugs. What a place. We had a great time, Dad and me.

Marooning the Men on Green Island, 1826

Neddy and my self climbed back into the boat. The others pushed her out, til we could feel the bite of the sea. The Menang men talked to each other, happy to be heading out to hunt. Neddy did not talk to them. He didn’t know their language. His face was different to them, his straight hair and canvas clothes made him different too. The Menang men treated him like they treated all us sealers, one eye on his cutlass and the other on opportunity.

We had wrapped spirals of kangaroo skin, fastened with copper nails around the oars, to keep them tight in the rowlocks and they creaked now as Neddy and my self laboured out to the island. With each creak and splash, I wondered what the other men seemed to know and I wondered about Randall, whose mind was always on the game and the trap.

We beached on the north side of the island, where it met the deeper water, crunched gently into the rocks. Twertayan disembarked and the four others followed him, their spears clattering the gunwales, stood waiting for me and Neddy to stow the boat,

Neddy hefted his oar out of the rowlock. I watched him. “Push off!” Neddy hissed at me, his eyes wide. I knew what we were about to do. I looked at the best of the Menang men – the five strongest, the five hunters and protectors – grinning, rubbing their thorny feet on their slim shins in anticipation of the bird hunt. I knew all about it then. I could have stopped it then but I did not.

“They do not swim, Neddy.”

“Push off, Hook. Randall tol’ us so.” Randall had broken Neddy’s little brother’s arm over his knee on Kangaroo Island.

“They do not swim!”

Neddy shoved an oar against a stone scrawled with the white markings of strange creatures and the little boat heaved away from the island. Whaleboats have pointed bows ahead and astern. There is no going about or shoving a clumsy transom against water, just turn the body and row the other way for a quick lurch away from a cranky humpback, from swell smashing against granite or from desperate people.

I tried to ignore the lamentations of the marooned Menang men but every time I checked ahead and then over my shoulder for bearings, I saw the five dark figures, their arms waving, silhouetted against the fertile green of their prison. I rowed with that same deadening in my stomach, that same blackness I feel when I dream bad things, when the only happening of my ill deed is shame, shame felt deep within my body.

“There is no water for them Neddy.” This concern, spoken aloud, did not unravel my guilt but made me a weaker man.

Seal Medley

"We'll have to get you a gun, girl," Old Salt grinned at me, knowing my response. "Just like Annie Oakley, with a bit of target practice... What's the matter - don't you like guns?"
He knows I'm fine with guns, that I was brought up by a gunsmith. "Ah shit, don't tell me - no, don't tell me, you like seals, don't you?"

Last night as we hauled, a seal fought us for the net. It ate every single fish, working its way from the channel entrance and towards the boat. The fish it could not tear out, it bit in half or just devoured bellies distended with roe. Finally the seal arrived at the boat and I peered down into the water to see its phosphorescent gleam undulating around the net. Like a marauding ghost, this seal.

On Breaksea Island, I lay across lichen, watching the seals and sea lions. They enchant me. Like pelicans or pashas, the seals' capacity for pleasure is heartening. It makes me feel good just to see them. They roll in water water, using the flippers as sails and up on the rock is the creche, where all the babies congregate.

" 'There is no better mother than the seal,' said the man with the slow voice.
'A seal's breast milk will raise an inch of fat. Isn't that what it says in the proverb?' said Michael."



From one of the highest points on the island, I watched a seal swimming along, way below, straight, swift and purposeful. One morning, I stood on the rocks, searching for bait, limpet knife in hand. A curious female seal sprouted beside me, blowing a mist of air and brine, eyeing me. She dived and surfaced again. She came closer and closer. I sang to her, can't remember the song, just sang as loud and true as I could. I could see her incredulity at my singing, knife-wielding self.

"That was the first time he saw her.
At first she was nothing more than a bulge in the water and he thought, I’ve been waiting for this, the creature who lives in this breathing inlet to reveal itself to me. He was waiting for a monster but it was a seal that rose to the surface. Her whiskers twitched and she snorted away a mist of water and looked at him with black eyes.
He put down the violin and she turned and rolled back under the surface. He picked up the violin and she appeared again. It was the first time he’d laughed out loud in weeks, months.
He played to her then, ‘Basket of Turf’ and ‘The Devil’s Dream’. She rolled and flipped and twitched her ears. He did not think of her meat or the skin that would warm him. He needed the company more."

" 'Did they let the young seal go?' said Michael the Ferry.
'I never heard what happened after.'
'Well, I believe that if they put him out, they'd be alright,' said Michael. 'Because I know my father, when he was a young lad, did the same. He brought home a young seal and put him down in the kitchen here for the night, and in the night there was a voice outside the door and it crying, 'Tadgh has left me!' and the seal in the corner of the kitchen here let words out of him when he heard the crying. 'I am Tadgh,' says this seal. When my father's father heard that he said to my father, who was only young at the time and had little understanding: 'Go,' he said, ' and take that seal and put him outside the door by the water's edge and leave him there. Say nothing,' he said to my father: 'only go and leave him there by the water.' And when my father opened out the door, he saw another seal on the quay waiting. If there's harm in the seal, Patrick Sean, there is good in him too. A man who is fishing and working near to where those creatures have their living, then he must study their ways.'
'They have been of great benefit to all classes of people,' said the man with the slow voice.
'It is better to have nothing to do with them,' said Patrick Sean, 'no matter is it good nor bad.' "

When the resident seal at Emu Point was slaughtered a few years ago, older locals looked towards Old Salt. He didn't kill that seal. He did write a letter to the paper, in which he said tour operators should not feed the seals, claiming it historically provoked bad behaviour in both humans and wildlife alike. The reason for the sudden interest in Old Salt, after the death of Sammy, was a very public stoush between him and the C.A.L.M officer who accused him of shooting a seal a few years before. "I didn't shoot that seal either," Old Salt told me. "But I know who did."
Sometimes I think Old Salt was quite happy to wear that one. The resulting notoriety made him Saltier than ever, and the rogue seal was dealt with.


Old Salt did tell me a story about the killing of a seal. "The Old Man and I went out to Waychinicup once. He was gonna set some nets and there, lying on the rocks was this big old bull seal. The Old Man picked up his axe, walked over to the seal and put that axe right through its skull."
I must have looked utterly mortified. "Why did he do that?"
"He was just about to set nets. He knew that seal would eat every, single fucking fish. He had five kids to feed and petrol for the drive out there." Old Salt shrugged. "Just the way it was."

" 'It were better,' said the man in the corner, ' for no man to kill a seal. Wasn't it your uncle, Michael, that killed the seal and died at the height of his strength?'
'He did, and I am after telling this man how he was warned.'
'What happened?' I said."



* David Thomson, The People of the Sea, a Journey in Search of the Seal Legends, Arena, 1989, (1954).
~ Sarah Toa, The Family Tree of Julian MacGregor, 2007.

'Fish', by StormBoy