Committee For Lorne: OUR FISHING INDUSTRY

An Extraordinary Chapter in Lorne’s History

The era of the fishing industry in Lorne was a formative period in the history of our town.

Over twenty couta boats operating from the Lorne Pier, a fishing co-op processing tonnes and tonnes of fish and employing many people. And the stories. Oh, the stories! Back in 2012, the Lorne Business and Tourism Association received an Arts Grant to develop and stage a production recounting the times when the fishing industry was at its peak. A group of musicians arrived in Lorne and spoke to some of the fishermen, some retired, some still active, and put together a one hour performance of stories and music. At the time, Richard Cornish, still a writer for the Age, wrote a piece about this project, titled Hook, Line and Clinker. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

“Two old fishermen sit in their club overlooking the Lorne pier from where they once launched their boats. As the swell rises and falls under the decking, tall stories and true fall from their lips. Sydney musician and cabaret performer Pip Branson hangs off every word, taking notes. Come Monday morning he will be joined by the rest of his ensemble, Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen. They will spend the week working with the old local barracouta fishermen, transforming stories of their lives at sea into a 90-minute cabaret, The Salty Sea Dogs and Skeletons of Lorne, one of the headline acts for next weekend’s second Festival of Performing Arts, Lorne.

Gary Norton, Pip Branson and Henry Love will relive stories of Lorne fishing. The heyday of that industry was in the early 1970s, when there were 25 commercial fishermen. ‘’We’d head out to sea when the barracouta came in,’’ Love says. ‘’When the ‘couta came up from the deep, the boats would start circling. Twenty-five boats. Out at sea. Watching each other. Competing for the same fish but working together.’’

Gary Norton, the other fisherman, chips in. At 65, he’s still fishing for crays out of Apollo Bay. ‘’In the days before radios and phones, no one went home until the last boat came in,’’ he says. Love responds. “Yeah, we’d wait for them standing at the bar of the Grand Pacific Hotel.’’ Norton continues, ‘’And when we left there’d be a layer of barracouta scales on the floor an inch thick.’’

Branson writes furiously as the two men tell more golden stories. They have been polished with each retelling, mostly at the local pub. ‘’One day the fishermen speared a shark in the back of its head,’’ Norton says. ‘’It swam away,’’ Love says. ‘’They thought nothing more of it until it came back at them full pelt and rammed the boat,’’ he says. Branson’s mouth is agape. ‘’Well, it was a clinker [wooden] boat and the shark smashed a hole in it,’’ he says. ‘’Sunk to the bottom.’’ Branson stares incredulously at the two, in awe of the wonderful material he and his band members will have.

Stories of whales, waterspouts, thousand-strong pods of dolphins surfing the breakers into Lorne beach and flocks of mutton birds so vast and dense they blocked out the sun for days are further raw material for Branson’s show. ‘’The ‘couta fishing went on for years,’’ Norton says. ‘’Then one year, 36 years ago, the barracouta never turned up.’’ ‘’Just like that,’’ Love says. The fishing industry at Lorne dwindled and the final nail in the coffin was when the government department responsible for the old pier condemned it seven years ago. That was the end of the Lorne fishing industry. The new pier was opened in 2009.”

As this piece of writing attests, it was a wonderful period of Lorne’s History. The Lorne Historical Society is now planning its next themed exhibition, focussing on the era of fishing in Lorne. We would welcome any material you may wish to offer as part of the exhibition; papers, photographs, artefacts etc. We are happy to accept loans or gifts and we are able to create electronic copies of papers and photographs and then return the originals to you.

We want the exhibition to pay tribute the all members of the community who were a part of this exciting time. Whilst we have some material, we want to ensure that we do justice to this story.

If you can help, please contact the Historical Society on 5289 1191 or email info@ lornehistoricalsociety.org.au

Gary Allen
President