Whilst in town, my father told us, he had had occasion to stop in at the Great Southern Hotel, where a gentleman recounted to him an amusing incident. It seems that very morning the gentleman had been fishing for schnapper in the bay when all of a sudden he experienced a different ‘bite’ to that which he had been anticipating. A group of Killer whales had materialised alongside his dinghy and, amidst the general spouting and breaching, one of their number had grasped the boat’s kellick between his teeth and proceeded to tow the vessel at speed in the direction of the open sea. The man clung to the gunwales and began to weep, for he feared he might never again see his loved ones; yet just as they passed South Head, the kellick was dropped as summarily as it was taken and the Killer and his entourage departed. Finding himself thus abandoned, the unhappy fellow was then forced to row a distance of some several miles back to his starting point. ‘Whereupon I discovered that the schnapper had long ago dispersed,’ he concluded, amidst general laughter in the front bar of the Great Southern.
When the good-natured joshing had subsided, my father asked the gentleman if he could describe to him the appearance of the particular Killer whale who had taken the kellick.
‘Why yes,’ the fisherman responded. ‘He was of about twenty-five feet in length, in rude good health, shiny black in colour with gleaming white marks around his middle.’
My father nodded thoughtfully. ‘And tell me, did you observe any peculiarity of the dorsal fin?’
‘Well, sir, it was probably six feet in height and boasted a small knob or protuberance about midway up its trailing edge,’ replied the fisherman.
At this, many of the surrounding drinkers at once erupted into knowing chuckles.
‘Then you should count yourself privileged,’ my father said, smiling. ‘For that was Master Tom himself who took your kellick.’
Tom was the leader of the Killers, and his age was calculated to be upwards of sixty years old, for he had been my grandfather’s lieutenant, just as he was my father’s. In spite of his distinguished years, his demeanour was ever that of a cheeky schoolboy, the sort that might steal your apples or throw rocks at you from across the street, but nonetheless a good boy in his heart and loved by all who knew him. As well as his duties as Chief Scallywag and Rouseabout, it was Tom who would generally take it upon himself to alert my father and his men whenever he and his companions had herded a whale into the bay. Leaving his team to keep the hapless beast in check with their usual antics, he would make haste across the bay to our whaling station at Kiah Inlet, whereupon he would flop-tail vigorously in a bid to attract the attention of the whalers. There was no more welcome sound than the resounding smack! as Tom’s mighty tail crashed down upon the water. The men would cry, ‘Rush oh!’ and run to the whaleboats. Once the boats were put out, Tom (an impatient fish by nature) would lead them directly to the spot where his chums had corralled the whale. Occasionally, if engaged in a particularly exciting scrap that demanded his full attention, Tom would send an offsider to rouse us, but mostly he preferred to take this task upon himself. Rather like my father in this way, Tom was the sort of fish who liked to see a job done properly, even if it meant doing it himself.
Any account of Tom and the wonderful assistance he and his team provided our whalers, however, should not exclude the fact that this mischievous Killer whale could at times be as much hindrance as help. Several times over the years, we had experienced a number of incidents involving Tom and the whale line, resulting in the loss or near-loss of the whale. I shall endeavour to explain.
When stuck with a harpoon, a whale’s natural response is to set off at great speed in a bid to escape the sting of the iron. The men chock their oars and are thus towed along behind it, great walls of water rising up on either side of their boat. Much skill is required to ensure that the whale has rope enough to run (and thus exhaust itself) without pulling the whale line out of the boat entirely. There is no more disheartening sight to a whale man than that of a whale swimming out of the heads with an iron in its side and fifty fathoms of rope trailing after it.
In all the danger and uproar of this hair-raising ‘sleigh ride’, the last thing that is needed is for a Killer whale to suddenly attach himself to the whale line and hang on for grim life, and yet this is exactly what had occurred on several occasions. As if losing his head in the excitement, Tom would throw himself upon the taut rope and hang there by his teeth, thus causing himself to be towed rapidly through the water along with the whaleboat. (I have never had the good fortune to witness this, but have had it described to me in detail; I had even attempted to re-create the scene in oils for the Eden Show the year previous, once again with little success.) Why Tom engaged in this behaviour, no one could say; whether it was a bid to slow the whale’s progress by adding his own body weight; or simply for the enjoyable sensation of being pulled forcibly through the water. Whatever the reason, his antics were not well appreciated by the whale crew, as the sudden application of his weight could result in the line being pulled entirely from the boat and the whale subsequently lost. On several occasions, a stoush ensued between whale man and Killer whale; once a boathook was brought into play in a bid to dislodge the errant cetacean, but this annoyed Tom considerably and he hung on all the more tenaciously.
Another story involving Tom, and somewhat of an infamous one, concerns the time the Hon. Mr Austin Chapman (the federal member for the region at the time) was hosting a pleasure cruise on the bay. Various visiting parliamentarians were on board, including the Hon. Mr G.H. Reid and the Hon. Mr Joseph Carruthers, the purpose of the excursion being to persuade the assembled dignitaries that, with its beautiful bay and natural harbour, the township of Eden was the obvious location in which to establish the national capital. With good fortune, they had chanced to witness the closing moments of a particularly exciting whale chase. Now that my father and his men were securing the carcass, Mr Chapman took the opportunity to bring the pleasure craft over so that his guests might inspect the dead whale more closely. The visitors had a great many questions to ask of my father, and my father, a shy man but anxious to promote the attractions of Eden, responded to the very best of his ability. Yet all the while he was aware of the Killer whales’ increasing agitation, and the growing urgency of securing the whale with anchors and marker buoys before they dragged the carcass to the depths below. As it was, they were already circling impatiently and tugging at its side fins.
‘You certainly put on a fine show for us,’ said Mr Chapman, after the initial introductions were made across the vast expanse of whale flesh.
‘Yes, she led us on a bit of a dance, the old girl,’ said my father, with characteristic understatement. The chase had in fact been a desperate one and taken almost five hours, the men rowing from South Head to North Head and back again, with multiple diversions along the way.
‘They call Mr Davidson “Fearless” in these parts, and I think you can now see why,’ Mr Chapman remarked to his party. ‘I hope he won’t mind me telling you that he has a wrought-iron constitution and a heart like a blacksmith’s anvil!’
My father was always embarrassed by this sort of talk, but his men raised a hearty ‘Hear, hear!’
‘Tell me, Mr Davidson, what kind of whale is this?’ asked the Hon. Mr Reid, later to become the Prime Minister of Australia, if only for a period of eleven months.
‘This is a southern right whale, sir, the most valuable of all on account of the whalebone.’
‘Is that so? And what would you estimate to be its worth?’
‘Well, sir, the whale oil on a whale this size would be in the order of two hundred pounds, and the whalebone itself – well, we’re talking in the league of a thousand pounds, sir.’
The whalers raised an even louder cheer at this news, but my father could tell by the threshing of the water that the Killers were none too happy about the hold-up in proceedings.
‘And tell me, Mr Davidson – may I call you Fearless? – tell me, Fearless, what are you up to here with the anchors and buoys and suchlike?’ enquired the Hon. Mr Carruthers.
‘Well, sir, we let the Killers here have first dibs at the whale.’
‘It truly is quite remarkable,’ explained Mr Chapman, eagerly. ‘The Killer whales will now take the carcass underwater and feast upon its tongue and lips – am I right, Mr Davidson?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘How extraordinary,’ exclaimed Mrs Reid. ‘I was not aware that whales had lips.’
‘Oh yes, ma’am,’ said my father. ‘A whale has lips all right.’
‘Then, some twenty-four hours later,’ continued Mr Chapman, ‘after the Killers have enjoyed their repast, the remains of the carcass will fill with gas and rise to the surface, whereupon our stout-hearted friends here will tow the brute home and begin the process of rendering its blubber into whale oil.’
‘So you share the bounty, as it were,’ said Mr Reid.
‘That’s right, sir. Well, the Killers help us catch the whales, and have done for sixty years. Also, to be honest, sir, I doubt we could get the whale off them now if we wanted to.’
And just at that moment, as if to demonstrate this last point, Tom surged up out of the water and grabbed hold of the rope my father had in his hands, hanging on to it with his teeth for twenty seconds or thereabouts and crushing several of my father’s fingers in the process. The assembled dignitaries cried out in horror; the whalers – terrified that the Killer would pull my father into the water – threatened Tom with whatever implements they had at hand until finally he relinquished his grasp and slid silently back into the water. Throughout the ordeal, my father’s expression remained impassive, nor did he utter a sound; a slight wincing as he tucked his mutilated hand out of sight was the only hint of any discomfort he was experiencing.
‘That’s Tom,’ he said by way of explanation to the visitors, who were staring at him aghast. ‘He wants us to hurry up, by the looks of things. I daresay we’d best get back to work, if you’ll excuse us.’
‘Yes, for heaven’s sake, don’t let us keep you,’ cried Mr Reid, who was still recovering from the shock of this sudden attack. (Mrs Reid had to sit down with her head between her knees.)
‘Before we take our leave, one final question concerning Tom,’ said Mr Chapman, anxious that the exchange end on a more cheerful note. ‘Would you agree with me in saying that there would not be a more loved and revered cetacean alive in the world today?’
My father paused to consider this. (It was always his custom to weigh matters carefully before giving an opinion.)
‘He’s a good fish is Tom,’ he said at last. ‘Though he has his funny ways.’
Seeing that Mr Chapman was smiling at him encouragingly and feeling that somehow something more was expected of him, especially in light of the incident they had just witnessed, he added: ‘He would be a tremendous asset to the nation’s capital.’
‘Hear, hear!’ cried the whalers.
Whenever I think of this story, I can almost see my father standing there atop the dead whale, a lean and wiry figure, yet somehow heroic with his bloody hand and his marker buoys and boathook, the sun setting behind him and the Killer whales circling and calling to one another with their high-pitched twittering calls. And even in spite of a subsequent infection and the amputation of the top two-thirds of his index finger, my father never went along with the thinking, popular amongst some in the township, that this particular episode contributed in no small way to the fact that Canberra was ultimately selected as the site of the nation’s capital, and that therefore the blame could be sheeted home to Tom.