Prawners Down Under (Vol1)

By Brian C. Bienke

Prawners Down Under is a sprawling, rollicking book that recounts firsthand the adventurous saga of Brian Bienke’s lifetime of fishing in thewaters of Australia’s New SouthWales and Queensland’s tropical north.Brian’s story follows four generations of his family from the 1920s untilthe present, sailing out of their home base of Byron Bay and thenBrunswick Heads, in northern New SouthWales, into the wild waters thatstretch from Cape York Peninsula, across the vast Gulf of Carpentaria, tothe Northern Territory’s Arafura Sea.
This is a fascinating insight into an era when a tough breed of men andwomen endured continuous hardships and danger to pursue theirlivelihood.
Crocodiles, sharks, and cyclones just some of the risks that had to befaced in an unforgiving environment that punished the unwary withinjuries and sometimes death.
Trawling for prawns is a lucrative business and the rewards can begreat,but it is highly competitive and a fleets of vessels converged onthe best fishing areas each season to outdo each other, often leading to hostile confrontations between crews.
But the rough and tumble fishing world was not without its friendshipsand fun, and Brian’s book has many humorous anecdotes that paint vividpictures of these hardy characters enjoying each other’s company atsea,or around a campfire on isolated beaches around the Gulf.
Prawners Down Under is a no-holds-barred journey through a fishing lifethat is both enthralling and entertaining. It is also a true to lifehistoric record of a time that is vanishing forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9780646572024

Book preview

Prawners Down Under

The (Fishing) Life of Brian

Part I

By

Brian C. Bienke

Prawners Down Under: The (Fishing) Life of Brian

Part I

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 Brian C. Bienke

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia

.

ISBN: 978-0-646572-02-4 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

This book is dedicated to any child who is born with dyslexia (word blindness) – I was but never found out until a few years back.

In writing this book, I hope I have shown that any child can be helped to achieve anything they set their mind to.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the help and assistance I had in preparing this story of my life.

Firstly, I give thanks to my mother and father who unfortunately didn’t live long enough to read this book. Without them I wouldn’t have survived the  sickness  I  had  early  on  in  my  life,  and  Dad pulling me out of a few close calls later on.  Then a big thank you to my wife, Irene, who managed the administration side of our business from home, brought up our four children on her own whilst I was away for months at a time, and supported me in my decisions over all the years since we met.   My two girls, Debra and Adele, who had to go without many things so we could keep putting our money back into our industry.   To my two boys, Brian Jr. and  Errol,  who  helped  with  the  building  of  our second  Deb-Rene-Adele  over  a  period  of  nine years. They were always there after school and on weekends to lend a hand, and both of them went to sea with me after they left school.

A special thank you to Brian Jr. who stayed the course, remaining firmly behind me through the family’s gradual climb from small boats to the largest one which was our last.

Also thanks to a long-time friend, Robert Reid, the well-known author for his advice and encouragement over the years.

Last but not least, Annette Janover who arrived after I advertised for someone to help put my story on computer.  She corrected my bad spelling, edited, designed and condensed my book from more than 900 hand-written pages to the book it is today.  Also, ever there, Irene and Brian Jr. who both went through the draft giving advice about what I should and shouldn’t say, and details I had forgotten.

All in all, we finally got there, so I hope you enjoy and discover a little of what we fishermen have gone through particularly in the early years of trial and error after World War II. At that time, Evans Paddon from Evans Heads came home to resume fishing when he discovered he could catch prawns in the open sea… and we have all gone on from there.

"Those who go down to the sea in ships,

And follow their trade on great waters

Those men have seen the works of God

And his wonders in the deep."

Psalm 107

"And the sea will grant each man new

hope as sleep brings dreams."

Christopher Columbus

Contents

My ancestors and my early years

Moving to Sugarloaf Mountain - 1940

Leaving school at 14 to work on the sea

Meeting the love of my life – April, 1954

Began building Deb-Rene-Adele I - 1957

Losing Deb-Rene-Adele I

Karumba to building Deb- Rene-Adele II

Lady Musgrave Island – Cyclone Emily

Launching Deb-Rene-Adele II - 1978

Cyclones, false leads and magnetrons

Pearling, Colt pistols and head-hunters

On our way back to the Gulf

In Paradise Bay

Chapter 1

My ancestors and my early years

In order to write of my heritage, I feel that I must go back as far as possible, for without ancestors you have no heritage.

My great grandfather, Frederick William Bienke, was born in Posen (Poznes) what was then Prussia, on the 13th October, 1850. His parents were William and Caroline (nee Whitt). Great grandfather was probably named after the then Prussian King, Frederick Wilhelm IV and his father was the Burgermeister or the Mayor, of the village.

However, as the new King, Wilhelm 1st was anti-Catholic, as well as the war monger chief minister, Prince Otto Von Bismarck, great grandfather’s mother advised him to seek another life in Australia, so as not to be conscripted into the army prior to the France/Germany war of 1870-1871.  Great grandfather was 18 years old when he sailed from Hamburg for Sydney. He was never to see his parents again.

Great grandfather worked in brickworks near Canterbury in Sydney. He then travelled by coastal steamer to Brisbane in Queensland. There he worked in a chemist shop in Queen Street and then moved to Nunda in 1878 where he married my great grandmother, Wilhelmina Schultz, the German born daughter of Frederick Schultz who had arrived in Australia in 1872. It is funny you know, when the serial Hogan’s Heroes was first played on TV we used to laugh at old Schultzie, as we had not looked up our family tree at that time, we did not know our great grandmother was a Schultz by birth.

They moved to the Clarence River in northern New South Wales, on board the Adelaide-based 280 ton barque Wodonga (a sailing ship with three masts). They settled on 40 acres of land – Portion no. 90 of the Parish of Elland. Great grandfather had already become a naturalized British subject. This land adjoined land selected by Frederick Schultz at Bridenstone.

The children were educated at the Dondyman School located in a timber village that died when the timber was cut out of the area.

My great grandparents had 11 children: Mary, Yohannah, William Frederick (my grandfather), Augusta Ernest Edward (later to run a boarding house in Evans Heads), Carl Julius (born and died in1899), Emma Louisa, Wilhelmina (Annabelle) Elizabeth Eva, Minnie, Lillian Aileen Caroline, Lucy Ann, and Kathleen Gladys.  Dear Auntie Kath, always a place to stop over while in Lismore.

Great grandfather and Great grandmother moved to Portion no.161 on the Glenreagh Road around 1900, and from there to Portion no.122, situated a little to the Grafton side of the junction of the Armidale Road and the Glenreagh, around 1910. They had 80 acres, 7 miles out of Grafton on the Orara River.

Great grandfather did tell my father when he was a small boy, about the blacks who were camped up in the bush just off his property. They used to have tribal fights with a few of them getting speared in the legs mostly, as they didn’t seem to try for a kill. This was their way of settling their differences. Some of the blacks would come at harvest time to help in return for tucker or whatever they could give them, as they had little themselves. He also told my father that the lubras (aboriginal Australian women) only wore old dresses and one day one of them got her dress caught in the hand-turned corn thrashing machine and ripped it right off her. His Grandfather had said, I can still see her old black arse going out the barn door!

One day he said to an old lubra, You black fellows will have to stop pinching my corn. She replied, I been seen a big carpet snake eating your corn. Some carpet snake.

As an afterthought, we have the original brass handles of the shed doors on this property, on our side doors on the flying bridge of the Deb-Rene- Adele – these were given to me by my father, Harold Bienke.

My great grandparents moved to Mullumbimby, then Alstonville and finally to Casino where they resided until they passed away in 1939 and 1947 respectively. I can just remember Great Grandfather before he died, sick in bed, with medicine bottles on the bedside table, and a funny medical smell in the room. I would have been six years old then.

Great Grandmother was the little old lady who walked up the street every Sunday to the Roman Catholic Church.

My father tells the story of Great Grandfather Bienke when they lived out of Grafton, coming home from town with his horses and dray carrying feed for his horses. There weren’t many cars back in those days, and the horses would move off the road where they could and then move back onto the road when the cars had gone by.

On this particular day, the horses arrived at the gate to be let in. Great Grandmother would let the horses through the gate and they would walk down to the barn as they were used to Grandfather coming home from town inebriated. On this day there was no grandfather and when they went back along the road looking for him, they found he had fallen over the front of the dray whilst the horses were off the road. The wheels had gone over him with a full load of bagged feed on the dray. The boggy black soil was so wet and soft that it had pushed him down into the ground and he came out of it with little more than cracked ribs.

Dad said that as a boy he had a close relationship with his grandfather; he even knew he hid his bottles of alcohol in the feed bins where his wife couldn’t find them.

Dad’s eldest sister, Auntie Lilly, was the first born around 1904 and Auntie would become the strong link in the Bienke chain over later years. Whenever or wherever anyone was sick or in trouble or there were losses in the family, Auntie Lilly would arrive on the train or bus to stand firmly by them in their hours of need. The last time I saw her was over at the old home as she was making her last pilgrimage to the north of the state back in 1993. Auntie Lilly held onto my arm for a long time as I spoke with her, and I knew then that it was to be the last time I would see her.

Grandmother Bienke had family going back to one of the members of the first fleet, Matthew Everingham, who did time for supposedly stealing two books from the lawyer he was apprenticed to (they wrote backwards and forwards to each other over the years).  Seven years after he was incarcerated at 14, he was granted land up on the Hawkesbury River which he built into a prosperous property and was later made a constable of police.

Ben Bridge – the flying horseman of the tablelands

Grandmother’s father, Ben Bridge, was well known back then for his exploits with horses. They used to say if Ben could put his hand on a horse, he could ride it. He did have some trouble with the law over a horse and spent 20 years of his life running from the law.

Ernestine Hill, in her book, The Territory, devoted a couple of pages to Ben, calling him the ’flying horseman of the tablelands’. One of his exploits she writes about is the story of when he was once captured and set fire to the slab wood jail at Burketown. He was then handcuffed to a tethering post in the courtyard and somehow he wriggled the post out of the ground and escaped with the post handcuffed behind his back. He swam the Nicholson and the Gregory Rivers which were full of crocodiles and somehow he dragged the post for 60 miles. Eventually, he turned up at a cattle camp where the blacksmith cut the handcuffs off him. This feat made every man in the territory his friend.

There was a pommie trooper who vowed to bring Ben Bridge in; silly bugger spent many years of his life chasing Ben. The black tracker the police used would turn a blind eye to Ben’s tracks. Ben was told by one station owner, If the troopers are coming, pick out the best horse and get going.

His sons travelled from northern New South Wales to the Northern Territory and across into Western Australia gathering signatures for a pardon - 2,000 signatures on a round robin set him free, the judge was even more impressed with two baronets’ signatures as well. That would be right!

I was fortunate to have known him, if for only a few days, when I was five or six years old. I was down at the old home in Casino pelting stones at swallows sitting on the electricity wires, when this very old man who was staying with Grandmother, said to me, Those little swallows are my friends – when I was out in the desert dying of thirst, these little birds kept flying up to the side of a tree nearby. When I crawled over there I saw a little knothole in the side of the tree with water trapped in it. They saved my life!

Great Grandfather Bridge went on to tell me more stories like when he was a small boy and wandered down to the creek from the farmer’s farm where he had been sent out to work when he was eight years old, when he discovered a man camping on the creek bank. He said he visited this man for a few days and even smuggled food from the house for him. The man showed him his revolvers before he rode away. The man gave him a pair of boots, far too big for him, but Great Grandfather said he loved those boots. This man turned out to be the bushranger, Thunderbolt!

I feel blessed that I was placed there at that time, so I could say many years later, Yes, I met Ben Bridge.

Grandfather and grandmother Bienke took up land across the road from his father on Portion no. 47. In the next few years they built a home on the property and during this time Grandfather made up a bullock team and did hauling jobs in between his farm work.

Grandmother ran a shop which they built on to the front of their home which was situated on the side of the road. They were doing very well. Then a bank manager talked them into selling out and moving to a larger property on the lower Clarence River.

After moving to the new property, the first year was a drought, and then they experienced bush fires. My father told me that one of the fires had come right up to the house and when it caught fire, his father carried what belongings he could out the other side dumping them onto the short grass. My father said he saw his father even carry out a full chest of drawers filled with linens and will never know how he was able to pick it up. However, they went back to fighting the fire on the house, and it crept around on the short grass burning all the furniture and belongings.

Dad recalls as a small boy, his family leaving through the gateway to the property with eight kids (Joyce and Neville were born later). They all left in the dray and the horses pulling them along, with just the clothes on their backs. A farmer had agreed to let them stay in an old house on his farm until they got settled somewhere else.

However, grandfather thought the house was haunted so they moved on the next day. It seems that after arriving they found one room locked. They went to bed that night and even with the front door locked, someone was heard moving around in the house. The next morning, grandmother who had bad eyesight put her hand on the door knob of the locked room and it swung open and inside she found a made-up bed with medicines on a table next to it. They discovered later that the last person living there had died in that bed.

Grandfather then went to fishing on the Clarence River and eventually ended up with a 27 foot motor launch to tow his net and gear to the fishing grounds.  His brother Ernest and Jimmy Coles were his crew. They sold fish from door-to- door around Grafton and what they couldn’t sell was boxed up in large square boxes (called doubles) packed with ice and sent to Sydney on the train.

Suffering with rheumatism forced grandfather to leave the fishing as in the winter time they would be up to their armpits at times in the cold water, setting their nets. He returned to share farming, never to regain the prosperity they had enjoyed on their property outside of Grafton.

Grandfather share farmed until he purchased the land at Wharf Street at the south end of Casino and rebuilt an old house on the block. I remember the wide red cedar planks on the walls; these have since been covered over during several renovations to the house. This house has always been known affectionately as the ‘old home’.

Dad was out on the New England Range picking gooseberries; the bushes were growing around the edges of the scrub, and dad would pick enough to fill the back of the utility truck. Then he would take them back to Casino and sell them from door-to-door around the town.

One funny story whilst he was picking the gooseberries: A man and his two daughters were also picking and dad had found a big bush with a lot of gooseberries lying under it but also a big carpet snake about 10 feet long curled up under it. He went on to the next bush to pick knowing the girls were close behind him and when they found the bush they jumped under it to get the berries and then jumped out of the top of it squealing their heads off. Their father thought it was a good joke.

1928 – Dad’s first farm

While up there he was talking to a farmer who said that the selection farm in the big scrub was up for grabs as the fellow who had won it in a ballot had not made any improvements in the past two years. The farmer said that if Dad applied, he would get it.

When he got back to Casino he told his father who said, 327 acres is too big for one man to clear, I will go with you. As Dad was only 18 years old, his father went and put in for it and they were to split it down the middle – they would clear his father’s first and get it producing, then clear Dad’s block. In 1928, you got a 99 year lease or could pay it off at ₤3 an acre.

When Dad and his father travelled up to the selection block at Mullumgum on the cream lorry the first time, they had to walk in half a mile carrying their gear whilst following a bullock snigging track into the big scrub, and fell enough trees to pitch their tent for the first night. (Snigging is the pulling of logs from the stump to the log dump).

Clearing the block meant felling everything as they came to it and were able to sell any logs they could have snigged out to the main road for transport to the sawmill at Casino.

The biggest tree was sawn into 16 foot lengths which were the biggest that the bullocks could pull. Dad stood 5ft 10in tall and he could stand alongside of it and just see over the log. These were mainly colonial teak trees, the largest one 9ft through, 80 ft. to the first limbs standing around 150ft tall. They were leaving it stand but as Dad said, his father wouldn’t listen to him when he said we should leave a patch of trees around it. His father felled everything and most of them falling and criss-crossing each other. Subsequently, when the scrub that had been felled was dry enough to fire, the big tree caught fire as teak is an oily timber and will burn whilst still green. Dad said it could make a strongman cry to see it burn from bottom to the top, for about a week. It was an awe-inspiring sight of a night before the big giant came down.

Dad killed a snake up there over 20 feet in length with a full grown wallaby in its stomach.

Life was hard for them and most meals were damper with treacle on it and a lot of paddy melon and a small wallaby now and then. There were hundreds of wallabies in the big scrub.

Grandfather Bienke – a tough man

Grandfather had a big tooth ache and asked Dad to pull it out with the pliers. Dad had a go and gave up, so grandfather sat in front of the galley fire and with both hands on the pliers eventually wriggled it back and forth until it came out.

They never got to town much and continued clearing and building the shack, bails and yards and fencing etc. while grandmother stayed back in

Casino with the smallest of the ten children – Auntie Joyce, Uncle Gordon and Uncle Neville, who would become a flying instructor when he grew up.

Uncle George Luxton, my mother’s brother, once told me, Grandfather Bienke would have been one of the toughest men he had ever met. He went on to say, "I was staying for a few days with them at

the scrub farm at Mullumgum and he had an abscess on his tail bone and it had eaten its way up alongside the bone. He carried a mug of salt water, a strip of rag torn off something out of the shack and headed towards a log on the edge of the scrub. He then pulled his pants down, squatted on the log and with a long twig began pushing the folds of the rag dipped in salt water, up into the opening until it was packed full. He then pulled his pants up saying, ‘Ah! That feels better.’"

Dad worked at clearing his block when he got the time after helping his father on his property, and picking gooseberries. They had a truck by this time, one of Dad’s brothers, Lance or Lionel would go with him. They kept the farm and this old home going with what they made from gooseberry picking and selling. Dad would keep just enough for one tin of tobacco a week.

This went on for four years until the farm was established and paid off. Grandfather sold it along with Dad’s block and he gave Dad ₤40 and said, Hang onto it you may be able to do something with it someday.

That was how it was done back then; the older ones would help at home to keep the family going. Dad said he could have cried as his block had a natural rock lagoon up on the top of the range, fed by a spring and always full. The road to his block goes off on the top of the range to the north side of the road, just before the tick gates. I must go there some day to see that country that is used today for cattle grazing.

While taking gooseberries to town one day, Dad said, I was getting the sun in my eyes as I was driving, my younger brother Lionel, who was only a kid, took his hat off and said, Here Harold put this on to shade your eyes." In doing so, he tipped his hat on its side and out of the band on the brim of the hat rolled some two bobs (two shilling pieces). As they kept nothing of what they earned and Dad thought to himself the poor kid had nothing, so he pretended he hadn’t seen them. The kids of today have a lot to be thankful for.

My father had to go elsewhere for work as he had married my mother by then. While the depression was still on, after the farm was sold, Dad worked digging drains for the future aerodrome at Casino. He was also digging trenches with a pick and shovel for sewerage pipes, in some places as deep as 15 feet. It didn’t matter how hard the going was, if you didn’t get your depth in your section, you were sacked on the spot. There were many more to take your place.

One yarn Dad told was about this bloke who had been at it all day, picking through integrated rock (a brown semi sand rock). At the end of the day the ganger (the foreman of the work gang), dropped the tape down for the chap to hold on the bottom of the trench. Knowing he was a few feet short, he grabbed the tape, pulled as much as he could down, until the ganger woke up and hung on to it, then he chopped it off with his shovel against the sides of the trench, singing out, Stick it up your backside.

 This work isn’t fit for a black fellow

My father was shovelling train trucks full of coal out on a heap one day and he was on his own as the other bloke was sick. He shovelled three truckloads of coal. When he got home he said he was sitting in the bath washing himself and became sick, losing his tea and thought he wouldn’t be able to make it to work the next day. However, after a good night’s sleep he was able to front up for shovelling once more.

When they got a few more blokes on the shovelling, one day he paused for a blow and said, This work isn’t fit for a black fellow. I guess they were all black fellows on that job. One of them jumped up and said, Hey! Are you having a go at me? Dad responded, Look, I apologise for saying that as I always thought you were one of us blokes. The other bloke went on as he probably reckoned Dad was backing down and Dad tried to apologise once more, as the yarn goes on, it was no good, he was going to give Dad a hiding after work. So Dad said, Well if you’re going to act like one, I will treat you like one.

The men then met down at the cattle crossing just back along the road from Grandfather’s home. As it turned out, he was a tent fighter and well known for his prowess. He brought some of his mates along and Dad had two of his brothers with him. When they shaped up, this bloke ducked and weaved, feinted and kept saying to my father, Come on have a go. He ended up spitting at Dad trying to make him through the first punch. Dad waited, one of my uncles said, "When the bloke moved in, your Dad hit him with his long left which I had seen later on drop a man onto his haunches. It was a straight left that chopped sideways at the end of the punch and every time the other bloke staggered up, Dad would put him down.

When I asked him about it, Dad said to me, This bloke was as tough as they come with what he took. He eventually waded in, Dad put his left arm under the bloke’s right one, got a handful of hair and pulled his head back and then began hitting him in the head with his right. One of his mates said, For Christ sake let him go, you will kill him! Dad dropped him saying, So what have you proved? My uncle said, I never knew Harold was that good. Grandfather Bienke did leave one thing behind that he made with an axe and spoke shave, and I guess a chisel that was a double bedstead made out of silky oak. My uncle Neville, the flying instructor from Casino, still has this down at the old home. I slept in this bed with my grandmother on some of our many visits to them.

Grandmother Bienke was a person who loved little children and she had quite a crop of grandchildren. In her later years her eyesight was fading and she would run her hands all over the small children and new babies cuddling them to her breasts. That is what I remember most as a small boy - being hugged into her large breasts.

Grandmother went into hospital for a minor operation,; they say she was given the wrong medication and passed away. I was about 7 years old.

My mother’s family & origins

On my mother’s side of the family, Great Grandfather Samuel Luxton came out from England as a blacksmith and farrier.

The following is taken from a letter to Ian Luxton, Connewarre, Victoria, 3227 written on 10th Feb 1995, from Brian Luxton of Wales.

The origin of the Luxton family was Saxons. The Saxon settlers or invaders arrived in Mid Devon their farthest western limit, in about 850AD. The village of Winkleigh was the centre of Luxton country and has two Saxon castle mounds so I imagine the original inhabitants weren’t too happy about the new arrivals. The name Lugg means ‘a rod, pole or staff’ hence big sail on a boat and combined with the Saxon suffix ‘ton’ meant the place or farm of a man called Lugg.

A farm near Winkleigh was recorded in 1347 as Luggeston, as is now named Luxton Baston. I went there a few years ago and it is a pleasant spot, good land, southern aspect, solid house. The house is pretty new only C18th but the original still stands probably built about 1225 as according to Brian Luxton in Wales, a King John 1199-1216 coin was found in the cob walls a few years ago. They had taken the thatch roof off the old house and replaced it with concrete blocks, calves lived downstairs as they had seven hundred years before and hay replaced the Luxtons upstairs. There was still a tiny medieval window protected by a lean-to shed, low down at one end.

The Luxtons and their relatives owned most of Mid Devon by 1850 when gold was discovered in Australia in 1851. Actually, I suppose Samuel heard the news and being without land and having a real skill at the cutting edge of 1850’s technology as a blacksmith and farrier, set off at once. Presumably the New Zealand branch of the family did the same.

In the 1880’s almost all the rest were wiped out by a long agricultural depression and competition from America.

There are hardly any Luxtons in Devon now. See if you can find a book called Earth To Earth by John Cornwell; a Penguin book about a triple murder suicide by a mad Alan Luxton. I am sure a very distant relative of ours!

I think Great Grandmother Mary (nee Readey) came out with him. He was a very strong man and one of his feats was to get under the belly of a Clydesdale draft horse and lift it off the ground.

Great Grandmother was known to walk to town carrying her small children when Great Grandfather didn’t come home from the pub, just to get the necessary provisions.

My Grandfather, James Barnard Luxton, was born on the 1st August 1873 at Lawrence, Clarence River N.S.W. When he was 26, he married my grandmother, Ellen Goddard who was 19 years old, of Nine Mile, Queensland. Her mother was Susan Burrowes and her father was William Goddard who was a miner.

Their children were Pearl, Ilene, Jim, George, Gordon and Dorothy (my mother). My grandmother went into a home with a bad type of epilepsy, not much was known in those days about it and she passed away in 1936. My mother was 2 years old when her mother was taken away. Aunty Pearl was 13 years old and she had to take over the raising of her sisters and brothers. Aunty Pearl was a grand lady who later in life was married and had a family of her own.

I never met my uncle Gordon Luxton but my mother gave me his second name, Clarence. He was her little brother. He was named after the Clarence River that they were associated with. He died from a car crash before I was born. Dad told me that in the hospital after the crash, Uncle Gordon said, I have had to do it hard all my life, so I will die hard. He was crushed internally so Dad said, he fought to the end.

My mother never spoke of it. So I guess Clarence, Clarence River as well as Brian, brine (salt water), I have been connected with in a way from the start.

Grandfather Luxton was a blacksmith and farrier on Gordon Brook station on the upper Clarence. My mother grew up there. Grandfather eventually shifted to North Queensland, hunting for tin when he had a good mine going at Atherton. He sent word to my father to come up to help him mine the tin. Dad would have no part of digging into the side of the hill. One story which comes to mind was when Grandfather found little heaps of tin in his vegetable garden. He thought he had found tin in his backyard and it turned out his little fox terrier dog used to lie on the drums of tin pebbles as they were always cool. The dog would lick the tin and then place his droppings down in the garden, hence the tin find.

Grandfather ended up with tin dust on the lungs as in those days they used no motor-driven ventilation in the mines. He was on his way down to stay with us in northern New South Wales. Uncle George from Yungaburra said when he was helping his father down on the trains to Cairns; he was so bad that he would pass out going through the tunnels from lack of air.

I only remember him once when he came down some years before and he was talking to my mother in the kitchen, when I poked my head around the corner of the door, he said, Run away son. I am talking to your mother. I poked my tongue out at him and my mum said to me later on that he had said, I don’t know what to make of the kids today! This sounds familiar to me now.

Grandfather Luxton passed away on-board the SS Katoomba on his way down to us, on the 20th September, 1939. He was interred in the Toowong cemetery – grave no. A3.557, date 23 September, 1939.

Makes me wonder now, how a man with his ability as a blacksmith and farrier would go digging holes in the ground to have his lungs ground out of him with tin dust. My mother said her father could make anything out of a piece of steel.

The start of my life - 1933

I was born on the 7th November, 1933. My mother and father were share farming out of Casino. Dad was down at the bails milking the cows when my older sister, Thea aged 2 ½ years, came down from the house to say ‘Mummy wants you’. Dad said he rang the next door neighbours who had a car and were going to run them to hospital when the time had come. Dad said, I just said, ‘Don’t worry about going to the hospital it is a bit late, bring your wife and sister over. When they arrived I just got out of the way. I had never felt so worried in my life.’

I came first and the doctor came second. No, he was just too late, so I was born out on the farm.

When I was a toddler they used to put me in a tea case (a plywood box used for tea sent out from Ceylon or wherever in bulk). This was while they did the milking by hand. One day they found me with a big tarantula spider’s legs sticking out of my mouth; apparently I was enjoying a small snack. Later on as a small boy, I would tell people where I was born and would tangle the two stories up saying, I was born in a box.

When I was about 3 or 4 years old, Dad and Mum had arrived at the five mile late after dark, and I was put into the bed with the house maid until they could arrange a bed for me the next day. In the morning, at the breakfast table, Uncle Billy was teasing me about sleeping with Masie. He said, I bet it was good, mate? I said, I didn’t like it as she had rolled over on to my wiesie. Everyone laughed but poor Masie ran out of the dining room with a red face. Dad said to me a while back, I don’t think your wiesie was long enough back then for the poor girl to have been able to roll on it.

Years later, Dad related this to me over the Radphone on my 60th birthday while we were up in the gulf on our trawler, Debrene Adele. Mum has never said how she felt with my early arrival but then that is my mum, not too much bothers her or so it seems.

A fisherman at heart

My life was mapped out to be a fisherman, right from the very start. All the Bienke men were keen fishermen probably going back to when they were younger when their father was fishing in the Clarence River. Mullet fishing in the Richmond River was always their favourite pastime. As a small boy, my introduction to a fish hook was being hooked in the ear as my uncle was casting his line around in an arc with a Ned Kelley rod (a rod with a fixed line on the end of it cast out into the water with a cork float).

My Dad had to cut the barb off with pliers. I was 3 years old and almost took my first aerial flight at the same time. When I was five, my first fish was an eel about 4ft 6in, almost as round as a teacup saucer or so my father says.

All I can remember about it was being dragged down the bank, then dragging my way back up the bank over and over until I won eventually pulling the big eel on a handline up the bank. My father said he wouldn’t intervene as I was doing a good job. I was yelling for help as it dragged me down the bank, and then yelling ‘I had him’ on the way back up. My first sale of a fish was the eel to the Chinaman across the road at Wharf Street with the market garden. I think it was a whole shilling I received.

Another incident with a fish hook. We always had a house cow and Dad took me down the river fishing as our cow had just had a new calf down that way. In Iamieson’s the butcher’s paddock, Dad picked it up putting it over his two shoulders, hanging on to the front legs and back legs with one hand in front, the free hand carrying his rod and line. The calf started kicking when its mother started bellowing as she followed Dad along the river bank. Whilst it was kicking, it hit the rod sending the hook flying around which then went up Dad’s nostril, and he had to wait until we got home before getting it out.

When I was a toddler and over at the five mile telling little stories, Uncle Billy would say, When little Snowie grows up he will be a story teller! We will wait and see. Snowie was his nickname for me.

We could catch prawns and in dry times the prawns would come up as far as the falls in the Richmond River. These were caught with a shrimp net, a steel ring of ½ inch round steel rod 12-15 inches across on a long handle covered with small net or gauze. Dad taught me to eat them raw by hanging onto their heads and biting off their tails. They tasted quite good especially if you were down the river for some time and hungry.

My first experience with a fish trap happened when we were over at the Clarence at the five mile, and my father made a fish trap. No, we weren’t licensed way back then as I have said years later when we were first professional fishermen,