Peninsula's Past: History hooked on fishing

SOURCES: History Redcliffe; Redcliffe revisited: A social history of the Peninsula by Moya Pennell and Judith Nissen for Moreton Bay Regional Council (2008).

PHOTO: Mullet fishing in 1970. Image courtesy of City of Moreton Bay (RLPC-000 000895)

Waterways surrounding the Redcliffe Peninsula have always provided a bounty for locals, visitors and those looking to trade or make a living.

European explorer Matthew Flinders reportedly found a long net, belonging to First Nations people, when he landed at Clontarf in 1799 and took it with him.

Settlers soon discovered what the Peninsula’s original inhabitants had known for thousands of years, fishing and water-based foraging yielded a tasty supply of fresh seafood.

By the 1840s, the oyster industry was thriving in Moreton Bay. The Moreton Bay Oyster Company ran dredging operations in waters including Deception Bay and Hays Inlet.

Visitors and locals often picked their own at Reef Point, Scarborough. Guests at the Bayview Hotel (also known as Scarborough Hotel) could even pick oysters from the owner’s son’s privately-leased banks.

Freshly shucked oysters were served at kiosks including one at Redcliffe Pde, which opened about 1920. The Cooee Oyster Cafe near the Woody Point Jetty and Belvedere Hotel was also popular.

From 1936, a number of crab and fish sellers operated from Peninsula beaches and jetties.

Commercial fishing was small-scale until the 1950s, with owner-operators heading out on their own or with small crews.

While the prawning industry started in the Brisbane River in the mid-1800s, it kicked off in Moreton Bay in the early 1950s after a prawn fisherman from Evans Head discovered them there in 1949.

Less effective hand-hauled nets were used before otter-trawls were legalised. These had boards, or doors, which kept the nets open while they were skimming the seabed. This opened up new prawning grounds and opportunities for a Redcliffe-based trawling industry.

Many professional crabbers switched to prawn trawling and Moreton Bay bugs became a lucrative industry.

In the 1950s Jack Parry, who ran three trawlers, opened a prawn-processing plant at the corner of View St and Oxley Ave, Woody Point.

Johnny Genn, Alan Smith, Jimmy Cranner, Archie Smith and Jim Finlay were among a group of local fishermen who pioneered commercial prawning from Scarborough in the early 1950s. They were joined by several fisher families who moved to the Peninsula from Northern New South Wales.

In 1954, a cyclone almost decimated the industry with many boats sunk or washed out to sea.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, locals decided to establish co-operatives at Sandgate, Scarborough and Mooloolaba in a bid to push out opportunistic fishermen from New South Wales who flocked to Moreton Bay in peak seasons and left.

The Scarborough co-op did not eventuate, but the Sandgate operation began on a barge in Cabbage Tree Creek in 1972.

By the late 1950s, there were about 20 prawn trawlers working from the Peninsula. In 1963, a local fleet of more than 120 trawlers and fishing boats was operating from Thurecht’s Jetty.

By 1965, a new Scarborough Boat Harbour was being planned. Stage one was finished three years later.

Over the years, mullet fishing has been a popular spectator sport when they are running, with anglers using the traditional method of working nets by hand. Massive schools of fish have been recorded in Redcliffe waters.