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Divers, John M Harding (senior) and Roy Bisson (on right)
This was the longest voyage undertaken by the famous charter boat in 1971. Newly launched the boat was 79' in length and had accommodation for 16 divers (later reduced to 12), plus a crew of four.
The lure for such a voyage was shell collecting, a search for the rare volute thatcheri. Half the charter cost was paid by shell collectors. I was sponsored by a tabloid newspaper to write and photograph five stories that could be serialized over one week.
Text written especially for divers would be published in Fathom No.6 issue. Art director and diver, Roy Bisson being on the voyage.
From San Francisco the late Dewey Bergman (Sea and Sea Travel) was scouting on this voyage for what would become regular parties of American divers and underwater cameramen. The world was about to discover diving Australian style. The future voyages would not involve so much traveling time.
Marion Reef was the new inshore destination, still in The Coral Sea and today almost unvisited due to fuel cost considerations.
The Chesterfield Reef trip was our most memorable. Near perfect weather and a good crew of professional divers. For further information, including names of shipwrecks at Chesterfield Reef Visit Info Site
IN OUR ARCHIVES
12/27/2005: MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE ........ with Dewey Bergman Imagine meeting someone through a message placed in a floating bottle? It happened to Dewey Bergman - the San Francisco...
There's a shallow reef one hundred meters offshore from the Byron Bay beach, east of The Beach hotel,where these B&W pictures were made. The large stingray is similar to the one Steve Irwin got too close to.
The Indo-pacific toadfish is also toxic. Many years ago people were dying like flies regularly each summer when toads were being caught and eaten in ignorance, mostly by migrants newly arrived in a strange land.
Elsewhere at Byron there is a wreck close to the beach at First Sun caravan park (and camping ground).
Best bet for a dive would be offshore to Julian Rocks with one of the local dive shop boats. Prices should be reasonable as compared with Great Barrier Reef day trips.
Best time to visit Byron Bay is a few weeks either side of Easter, each year, but avoid the Easter crowds. In late summer the sea breeze is weaker while the weather still warm.
(During winter, head for Cairns and Port Douglas in North Queensland).
Maurie Vierow driving the dive boat, arriving at Julian Rocks
The first we heard of The Julian Rocks was a magazine feature in the Californian SKIN DIVER magazine, in 1962.
In those days we were based in Sydney and when traveling north there was an urgency to get to Tweed Heads ASAP.
Byron Bay was not on the common list of hot spots. The Julian Rocks often missed the blue current that was common further north at Nine Mile Reef, Cook Island and especially Flat Rock.
Plus an abattoir at Byron was not a pleasant thought, the blue water seemed to pass well offshore often missing The Julians.
PEOPLE AT BYRON BAY: Bill Silvester saw a good potential and was first to establish a dive shop in town. Bob Beale and John Heyer were the next players, Bob is still in Byron, now with National Parks and Wildlife.
Maurie Vierow (pictured above, in 1981) is today a senior inspector with a state government department responsible for inspecting dive shop filling stations.
On the last dive I had with Maurie, (one of the few times I've been diving withoutan underwater camera), what amazing sight occurred did I miss getting on film? A wobbegong shark eating a live sea snake!
We now understand why there are not too many sea snakes in southern semi-tropical waters.
The venomous sea snakes get swept south in currents but don't seem to last long.
Snakes have been noted washed ashore on Bondi Beach in rare examples.
Are the power poles shown here are still in place?
Near Byron Bay, this beach that is renowned for multi-million dollar properties.
Serious beach erosion is regularly featured on TV news.
Byron Bay was once a fabulous spot. Quiet and with low prices. Good diving offshore. Today it's the opposite. Over-priced and crowded.
Brief Recent History, Byron Bay
The story told years ago was how the area was 'discovered' by hippies, who favored Brunswick Heads - a nice-looking family holiday town by the sea, nearby.
Byron Bay then featured a closed-down whaling station and a 'live meat processing factory' (abattoir) at Belongil, with a pipe spewing blood into the sea, off the beach.
A not-too-popular well paying job for scuba divers was inspecting and clearing the pipe on the 'blood line'.
Until about 1980 Byron Bay was a 'marine industrial town'. Not too pleasant to look at but good fun and good value.
A tough attitude senior policeman serviced the area and virtually kicked the hippies away from Brunswick Heads township, so they moved on to nearby Byron Bay where nobody complained very loud. Byron was already established as surfing hot spot.
The surrounding hills attracted additional hippies who in time bought real estate and settled in.
The rich dairy pasture villages of Nimbin, The Channon, were an inspiration for young city people to get back to nature, for some to get married and for most to grow herbs.
Byron Bay has since become the destination for international backpackers. Prices for everything are probably double what they might be had the abattoir not closed and the blood ceased flowing into the bay.
Vegetarians would now out-number meat eaters in this part of Australia.
Abalone collected from low-tide rock pools by local resident A J "Tony" Flook
Just beyond the rocks in the background is where a fatal shark attack occurred many years ago. The north entrance to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbor) is in the far left background.
ABALONE IN THE NEWS
The (Australian) Victorian Abalone Divers Association (VADA) wants the State Government to prevent poachers from spreading an abalone virus along the south west coast. The Association's Vincent Gannon says poachers have been close to areas where ganglioneuritis (the abalone virus) has been found. The State Government has banned the collection of abalone along a 13-kilometre stretch of coast near Cape Otway to help stop the virus spreading further east. (Australian) ABC-news
(Top picture)Original anti-shark 'net' was stainless steel rings (Later replaced with nylon net then removed altogether).
(Bottom left) Sydney tabloid newspaper Telegraph regularly features marine stories. Tues 25 June was a 2.47 meter male bull shark tagged and released at Manly that entered Sydney Harbor (Port Jackson) and apparently became 'lost', moving throughout the harbor. 1. Bulk of the sharks time was spent west of Sydney Harbour bridge. 2. On a single day it traveled 55 km. 3. During 14 days it traveled 295 km with three days unaccounted for. 4. 230km was traveled during darkness hours. 5. Another 55 sharks have been tagged for tracking by Dept.of Primary Industries. Sydney harbor was a priority after recent near-fatal attack on a navy diver. 6.There are 38 listening 'posts' in Sydney harbor with another 200 along the coast to track the tagged sharks.
(Lower right) Balmoral Beach showing original steel shark net. The rocks in foreground have been where divers photographed dozens of seahorses per night dive.
There was a fatal shark attack at Balmoral in the early 1960's on a spear fisherman.
Captain Perry Harvey had a battle with marine park authorities over obtaining their permission (believe it or not) to remove coral destroying starfish from a vast patch of coral reef at Beaver Cay.
The reef was visited daily by his charter boat Friendship.
To sit by and watch the valuable coral reef (for tourism) being killed was 'not on".
Thousands of starfish were removed, before permission was finally granted.
The reef was saved, but only just.
Captain Perry Harvey was regularly featured in marine documentaries. The late Robert Raymond did extensive documentary film reporting and wrote a book on the subject.
Eventually budgets for starfish eradication by divers were granted.
Divers aboard TSMV Coralita collected two such strings of starfish using a single tank of air for each diver.
It was a small dent in the vast population that the charter boat had dropped anchor on. We made a 16mm film record of this encounter - which was not repeated on the following voyage to the same area.
With needle-sharp and extremely painful spines (if you have an accident) - a better plan is to stay well away from this pest.
Part of the perhaps one million starfish, near Mystery Cay
We were dumbstruck at the sight. Coralita had dropped anchor on the last day of our 10-day 'Sea Safari' to The Coral Sea. The charter boat, with 12 experienced divers aboard was returning to the Queensland port of Yeppoon, home base for this (at that time) world class 79 foot dive boat.
The scene we discovered underwater was worse than anything reported elsewhere. Far worse than the Guam coral reefs of 1969 (which instigated Project Stelaroid to investigate Micronesian corals and Crown of Thorns intensity).
The late Theo Brown had found hundreds of starfish at the Slashers Reef off Townsville and obtained black and white pictures for his book on the CoT plagues subject.
Here we were much further south in the vast reef area of The Swains with possibly the largest concentration of starfish yet seen anywhere, including the Great Barrier Reef.
The starfish we guessed, numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The diving deckhands (Richard Weir and Roy Muller) then collected 1000 starfish using spears and long lines to thread the starfish on, like a needle and thread.
This way we thought an estimate of the population might be obtained. The further we swam from the charter boat showed no decrease in the numbers. Starfish may have been in the million and covered a huge area of lush living coral.
Reef fish hovered above, unable to occupy usual hiding space under coral ledges.
Some months later we returned to what our captain believed was the same location - but it wasn't. This was the era pre GPS.
We had been on an unnamed reef, "Two reefs east of Mystery Cay" said Capt. Wally Muller.
Today the this reef should have a name or at least a number.
What became of the Crown of Thorns controversy? At the time it was a marine equivalent of climate change. People seemed to ignore the problem and it just 'went away', but not without cost to the coral.
The jacket was on temporary loan from Joe Annesley later to become a notorious street fighter in the inner western suburbs of Sydney. We were good friends in the early days then lost contact when Joey did not enjoy free diving and joining Sydney Sea Hunters.
Sharks were on everyone's mind in those days. "Only very brave men or fools went spear fishing....." a journalist wrote, "and sharks do not distinguish between fools and brave men".
The club scene did young guys a lot of good with changes to lifestyle. They avoided Saturday night excessive drinking binges and the resulting violence in order to be fit for diving on Sunday.
The clubs traveled along the coast to new destinations each weekend. Overnight camping was also a treat. Later when we bought powerboats for better diving opportunities it was all a new world far from the pub scene.
This picture was taken with an early morning fog background on a farm at Harden in western New South Wales.
Pictures with Box Brownies are in-vogue as an art form. The soft focus often being a pleasant change from pin-sharp high mega pixel results which are more common than not.
FathomOz: PYE 17" TV showing TCN9 test pattern (1956)
Prices of a seventeen inch b&w TV set, 1956 would be similar to that of a very large flat screen today. About $4000 or more.
This PYE 17" was 207Gns.Guinea was a fancy way of saying 207 pounds PLUS 207 shillings.
A guinea was one pound and one shilling.
This common billing method for all 'upper class' transactions, i.e. medical, legal, fashion, or professional anything went out the window when we switched to using dollars in 1966 on 14th of February.
Trivia: On that night we were showing underwater skin diver shark hunting films at the Canberra Theatre with our then Prime Minister (Harold Holt) sitting in the audience. Holt was a free diver who attended the show at our invitation.
I sat outside on the steps of Parliament House the next morning while my more senior partners had tea and biscuits inside with the PM. I didn't mind at the time, although it would have been nice to have met him.
Candy and Mandy were the first blonde singers I remember from the rock n roll era of Sydney. They appeared at one or more of the famous Sydney Stadium international rock concerts hosted by Lee Gordon.
This picture was taken during a Saturday night TV show "Six O'Clock Rock" 1957
I thought the taller 'Candy' was something very special when I was aged sixteen. The girls seem to vanish from the music scene far too early.
"Candy and Mandy had themselves success with "Clicketty Clack" before fading away. For a short time they rivaled Annette Funicello as every schoolboy's fantasy". From: http://www.buffpoint.brianbrett.id.au/the_one_shots.html
There were two cameras that ordinary Australians owned in the 1950's, both made by Kodak. The more economical was smaller and used film sized 127.
The larger format camera was the common Box Brownie which used film commonly called 620. (6cm x 9cm). The camera is featured in the above left illustration.
In the late 1950's a more compact flash could be attached. Another innovation was a simple close-up lens attachment built-in and activated by a pull-out slide.
In 1957 Kodak was offering mini-enlargements from this 620 film.
Instead of previous "contact" prints which had been on offer for years, the new larger size prints were on 9cm x 13cm paper.
With a good exposure the results were quite nice. The cost was similar to a 5" x 7" color print today, at a guess. Six shillings for 12 prints and processing, plus whatever the film cost had been.
Film and processing was mostly handled by chemist shops (pharmacies or drug stores overseas). Camera shops were few.
The above shots are from three packets of negatives that have survived many relocations from the city to the mid north coast and Queensland over a period of 50 years.
They are my photographic efforts, the negatives were kept safe by my late parents. I'd have probably thrown them away a long time ago. It's a mini miracle these have survived.
With a Canon 9950 digital film and print scanner, results obtained are better than what we would have seen on paper years ago.
(Note: FathomOz was a previous photo blog which now directs inquiries here. I'll attempt to republish some of the professional-quality original pictures again as time goes by).
We had an interesting voyage at greatly reduced rates. The Lindblad Explorer ran a couple of trips especially for Indo locals of Bali, and what a fun time we had. My coverage was in Sea Safari a 90 minute film made especially for video release.
It showed several giant Komodo dragons (a monitor lizard that grows to 4 meters) feeding on a slaughtered goat - a practice since stopped for the tourist industry in this national park.
The guest list included many Europeans, including this Italian lady who spoke little or no English.
Some years later the Lindblad Explorer struck an iceberg down south and sank in a much publicized media spectacle.
By then she had been re-named, something else with Explorer still attached to the name.
Proof (or just and example) of the old nautical belief that re-naming a ship brings it bad luck?
It was far from the end of the road for the V8 Ford in the background. We did another 200,000km before retiring the 'old girl'.
Too much weight (projectors, film and diving gear) being carried eventually caused the damage here. Plus the 5km of rough dirt road that linked Seal Rocks to the holiday township of Forster on the mid north New South Wales coast.
The Ford did over 500,000 km around Australia. Since then a even greater 'mileage' in a Toyota 4Runner.
The Australian Seafari film shows no longer occur - coinciding with a decline in scuba dive shop takings. I'd like to think there was some connection but as the decline is happening everywhere there are obviously other factors as to why scuba diving is no longer considered a must-do high adventure activity.
Scuba diving is not a 'competitive sport' and has never been one. It's been something unique and better than a competitive recreation sport, yet only when sufficient time has been devoted to understanding all the aspects of what can be entailed.
In Taiwan there are two huge ocean universities which teach every known aspect of working with the sea.
In USA there is a university of surf and also another for the hamburger industry.
I did very well selling my latest shark pictures and stories to Sydney newspapers. All went well until a features editor changed my description of a dangerous shark to now read "like a guided missile of terror with murder in it's heart".
I gave it away for years after receiving an apology in writing. My reputation in tatters, I imagined in 1977, which was not a good era for common sense.
So much for trying to write factual shark information that was not considered exciting copy, even with excellent pictures.
