Rex Greeno: Memories through Sea Stories

I think dad’s drawings draw upon all these different aspects as he’s walked through history from way back when … to now … to recent times. And that will be great for the children and the grandchildren in the future to look back on. They’ll be able to connect all these lines.

I started fishing with my father when I … well actually … apparently, they since found a drawing of me when I was only about fourteen, going to the local school, and drawing a sailing ship. I started fishing with my father when I was about eighteen ... nineteen. And I didn’t smoke or drink. And so dad used to go out to sea for eight to ten days. My brothers-in-law were ashore and having a good time and here’s Rex out there. On a boat. Dad never spoke very much. And he didn’t drink. And you wasn’t allowed to have any beer and that. So, I bought a book and started drawing … and drawing … and drawing … and drawing. And that’s when I actually started drawing sailing ships. Then there was a big lull … right. No more drawings until I had a big operation in 2018. And to help me get over it … um, when I used to feel down, I started drawing sailing ships.

There’s been a theory about the Moonbird People … right. Um … when I was at Babel anchored one day. One evening when all the muttonbirds was coming in there was a full moon shining. And all the muttonbirds were flying past the full moon, coming into land on Babel to go in their rookeries. And that gave me the idea of doing a drawing on the Moonbird People. And calling it the Moonbird People. And my drawing showed a pair of muttonbirds flying out of the moon, coming down on a moon beam, going through lots of stages and when they land on the earth they become a human being. That’s the moon … the two, pair of muttonbirds flying down on a moon beam. As they come down, they change their shape. And eventually when they landed, they become a pair, walked out of the moon beam and that’s what started our ancestry … that’s my story.

Yes, that was my first experience actually of catching crays out with my grandfather. But he used to take me and my brother out on the country and show us how to set snares, um, read the signs, you know. And we used to gather swan eggs and Dar used to put a mark on them. Cause swans, they lay three eggs. They won’t incubate unless they lay a fourth egg. So, everyone took the fourth egg and marked the first three. If you wanted a feed of swan eggs, then you took the fourth egg. After a period of time I thought, ‘oh, no we better let them lay’, you know. And me and Bruce was really, really … we said to Dar one day, ‘they must be able to count Dar.’ Swans must be able to count. Because as soon as you left the fourth egg in all of a sudden, these little swans started swimming around. But little things like that he taught us, you know. Made little shelters … bend a few trees over. And amazing what you can do, you know. Little shelter, out in the bush. We’d stay the night … we were only little tackers … only seven or eight or nine years old.

They knew by certain angles of the swell that came into the shore. They knew by certain bird calls … like on Flinders Island there was a bird called the mopoke. It was a type of owl. And if this mopoke made a noise … My grandfather, my people knew that the wind was going to come from the southeast … So that was one little thing. There’s heaps of birds like terns and seagulls that all nest together. And they used to nest on a certain side of a point. So, they knew that in the future if they nested on the east side of the point, they knew the wind was going to come from the west. And vice-a-versa. And they was always right. It’s changed a bit now because of the climatic thing. And also, there was certain cloud formations on the top of mountains, that they knew the wind was going to come from a certain direction. Um, and there were probably lots of other ways. But they were the ways that my grandfather told me about.

All I know is that my grandfather, my uncles, and a lot of other people from Cape Barren Island used to set snares to catch … They used to set what they call a springer snare. They’d bend a stick and they put some pegs in the ground, and they’d put treadles on the pegs. And they’d put long treadles. And the kangaroo would come hopping along, jump onto the treadles. They’d knock down a small set of peddles, and that released a springer, and it went up in the air and the rope with the loop on it used to catch the kangaroo around the feet. That was one snare. The other snare was what they called a necker snare. That was for catching wallabies and possum.  They used to tie … it was made out of a wire … a wire loop. Very simple. And the wire loop was tied to a tree or a post. And the wallaby because they are so small, they’d come crawling along, go through the wire necker and that tightened on their throat. But that’s only ... I’m not too sure … I know my people and a lot of people on Flinders used to use that to catch kangaroo because the kangaroo pelts were worth a lot of money in the olden days. They used to catch, skin them and make rugs out of them. People used to make blankets out of them and other things. And until that industry closed … then they didn’t use the snares then.

They intrigue me … I mean, you know, these huge ships. With sails up and the wind pushing them along. And when it got too windy, they folded the sails up … And what they call bare poles. And those sails, you know. They used to go around places like Cape Horn and the seas were so big. There was an old guy called Danielson, that lived at Lady Barren, and he was a sail maker on one of these old windjammers, he called them. And he used to tell us … me and my wife’s brothers … stories about how they used to go around Cape Horn. And the seas were so big that the blokes at the wheel, they used to lash them on the wheel, and they were never allowed to look back because they reckon a lot of them actually fainted and died of heart attack. The seas were so big. And that sort of intrigued me. So that’s when I started drawing sailing ships.

The only other boat that was wrecked there was the Sydney Cove. And she was … out of India bound for Sydney. And in those days they didn’t know about Bass Strait, so they used to sail around the bottom of Tasmania. And she was loaded down with, probably they think, probably too much cargo. And she sprung a leak. And the pumps on it, they couldn’t keep up with the water coming in. So, the captain decided to beach her. And he decided to beach her on the east side of an island called Preservation. Well, he couldn’t have picked a better island to beach her. It was … when he ran her ashore, it was in shallow waters. And then they were able to salvage all the cargo off her. And then another couple of boats came down from Sydney and loaded up all the excess cargo and took it back to Sydney. And apparently, they sold it and made a very big … a large profit out of the things that was on her.

And one of the drawings I’ve got is about gathering yakka gum. But my wife’s family, they used to … there’s a tree we call yakka gum. They call it different names. Some call them black boys or not too sure of the what’s-a-name for them ... but we call them yakka gum. And if you cut the outer casing of the yakka gum, they’ve got this real pretty orange … skin around them. And they used to use that to make lacquer out of. They use it for backing the old linos. And lots of other things that I’m not aware of. And my wife’s people … my father and her brothers … they did it for many years up on Cape Barren. My grandfather and my great uncles and dad, they did a little bit at Lady Barron but there was never the quantity down there. So, it faded out.

A firm in Launceston called CH Smith and they used to buy all the salted birds from all the people. When you imagine thirty-five sheds, they’d probably have about four hundred birds for a cask. They’d all do about thirty thousand. That’s a lot of casks of birds. And a lot of trips by the local traders. And they’d sent them over to CH Smith and he’d repack them. And put them in, um, barrels and send them to New Zealand. The Māori’s was the best … they’d sell a few local but the Māori’s were the best buyers … you know, that was their biggest customer. They kept the feathers. … the feathers went into feather … mattresses and that sort of thing. They used the fat … people used … bakers used to buy the fat, render the fat off the muttonbirds. And a lot of bakers used to use it in their cooking. And the oil, which comes from the gurry, they used to skim that off and a lot of people used to use it for their own medicines. But it was very well sort after by the horse racing industry. They reckon it was great for the horses … they used to rub it on their body and that … keep for a good shine … I’m not too sure about that.

When I first started fishing with my father, there was no echo sounders. What you did, you went along with a piece of lead with a bit of … um, grease on it. And you threw the lead over the side, tied to the rope obviously. And if it landed on the sand, you’d pull it up. Crayfish live on rocks. And if you pulled it up and there was a bit of sand on it well you knew you wasn’t on a rock. But if you threw it over and it come up with nothing on it well there was a rock there, so you threw your pots in. Pot black as the old saying of course. But then, of course, echo sounders come in and they made it a lot easier. It actually showed the bottom, showed the rocks and the reefs on the bottom. And so, you could set your pots on reefs. The biggest problem … one of the downfalls of the crayfish industry in later years with echo sounders. We used to catch crayfish on rocks, that was about two fathoms, which is about six … twelve feet in the old language. And some of the brand-new sounders … and crayfish only need a little ledge about half a metre high to live in. And these new sounders were picking up all these ledges, small ledges … and it nearly fished the industry out. But then they brought in … now since I’ve retired, they’ve brought in different area quotas. And in a quota system you’re only allowed to catch so many crays in a certain area. Well, that’s helping out apparently because it’s built the crayfish back up, nearly to what it used to be.

My first experience of muttonbirding, we went to Babel. And I think … it was on the west beach at Babel … I remember going ashore. And my great Uncle Fred, and he worked with my grandfather, he was the muttonbird opener. And there was a shed on what they call the north point at Babel, which the shed’s no longer there. And I remember going around, going to shore on a little dingy. Walking around … good lord, I was only about seven, I suppose. Me and Dean … me and Bruce … and I reckon probably Betty. Anyway, we walked around … and unloaded our clothes, all the food and that. And Uncle Fred took me up in the rookery, me and Bruce. And we caught these muttonbirds, and when we hauled them up, they was nearly as tall as we were. About half the height of us. But we caught a couple. Put the sock on our hand. I’ve got a drawing of that … photo of that somewhere. And I was catching these first birds. And I remember Uncle Fred just on dark he used to take us down and we’d catch cod off the rocks. It was the only time we’d catch cod. But the bloody muttonbirds kept … you know, they’d come in the millions, and they made that much noise. They kept us awake but of course you soon got used to that, you know. But that was only my real experience of muttonbirding commercially.