Dugga
Image Credit:JUSTIN MCMANUS
Or, The Real Meaning of Vernacular
Last Saturday, walking back along the pier at St Kilda, after an afternoon out racing on the Bay, the well-known teal green double ender belonging to the legendary fisherman, Dugga Beazley came gliding past the walkway, reaching under full gaff main and jib. The long boom just inches above the cockpit coaming, driving the boat effortlessly in almost no wind. Everyone in our group, made up mostly of fast plastic boat sailors, stopped and watched in awe as this perfect formed machine slid silently by.
I have heard Dugga speak over the years at fishing and wooden boat events and remember being enthralled by his story telling and the depth of his knowledge acquired over generation of being out working on the same stretch of water, Melbourne’s Port Phillip. So, when I got home, I felt like hearing a little more from this special person and found these transcripts on the City of Port Phillip Website.
I’ve picked out a few that seem to have special relevance to recent posts on this site.
On Net Boat and Couta Boat design
“Well, a couta boat, it’s got what you call a transom. It’s square at the back, you know? And its stern is shaped like a wine glass. They call it a wine glass stern, but a double-ender is virtually the same shape on the bow as what it is at the stern.
A double-ender boat is built for net fishing. When you had a double-ender with a pointy stern on it, when you were shooting nets, putting nets out on the water, they wouldn’t catch on the stern of the boat. And when you’re pulling them, we used to pull them back in backwards, and the boat would come nice and straight. And then you’d pull the nets over the stern. But with a couta boat, a couta boat was built to fish in Bass Strait. That’s why it had a deeper draft, to keep the propeller in the water all the time. Because a double-ender out in the big swell – You go out through the heads, and the waves go from being, you know, a little chop … … Into a big roll. And when you go over a big roll the boat would go over like that, and the propeller come - It doesn’t come out the water but it cavitates. Whereas a couta boats’ propeller is always deep in the water… And a square stern boat was better for couta boat fishing, than what a double-ender was, because catching couta you just used to stand in the stern and hook them. Pull them in on hand lines. So, the stern of a couta boat is roughly five to six foot wide, so there was plenty of room to put two or three lines, you know? But a double ended boat it comes to a point, so one man down in the back would fill all the room up.’
On becoming a fisherman
“Well, I can remember a good way back and one of my earliest - I can always remember being in the boats with the old man. One of my main memories from when I was very young, which would have been about 1945 or 1946 was the American Fleet coming to Melbourne, just after the war. And at that time the ships were still painted in camouflage.
That was at Station and Princes Pier. And as you know there was a lot of patriotism – Because of the war with America and that. And there were thousands of people going down to the ships. But the day they left the Princes Pier and Station Pier, my mother took me down there. And I can remember as if it was yesterday, thousands of people there. The ships were at the pier. All the girls were kissing the American sailors on the pier - Then most of them went aboard. And when the ships started leaving the pier everyone was cheering them. And the bands on the big ships, the cruisers, they were playing Anchor’s Away.
The earliest I can remember being in a boat, was with my Uncle, George. He was my father’s brother. And he had a little couta boat, 21-foot couta boat which wasn’t suitable for the work they were doing. And he exchanged it for a double-ended boat called the Greta. But the boat was up between the Spencer Street and Queen’s Street Bridge. And I can remember him, going up there with him in the couta boat and getting the other boat and bringing it back to Port Melbourne.
Well, they had it for quite a long time, and he sold it in around about 1958. And I always kept my eye on it, you know? And it finished up at St Leonards, and anyway I knew the fisherman down there. Vin Rigby his name was. And I told him, I said, “Keep your eye on that boat, if it ever comes up for sale let me know.” And he rang me one day, and he said that the bloke wanted to sell it. So, I went straight down and bought it, and bought it back home. It’s down St Kilda now with the rest of them, so, yes.
Well, I actually left school when I was 13. I was 14 in August, but I left in April because in those days, when they were fishing, the net season used to start in April. Anyway, of course, I was adamant that I wanted to go fishing. All of my mates at Nott Street all went to South Melbourne Tech from the sixth grade. But if I had have stopped at South Tech I would have had to go to school until I was 16. And anyway, if I stopped at Nott Street I could’ve left when I was 14, see? So, I stopped at Nott Street until I was old enough to leave and the old man, well my mother actually went up to see the headmaster and explained the situation to the headmaster and they let me out of school six months early.
Look, all I wanted to do was get in a boat and go fishing. When I left school, my old man carted me up to the Fisheries and Game Department. It was called the Fisheries and Game Department then, to get me a fishing licence. And you couldn’t get a fishing licence ‘til you were 16. But anyway, the bloke there said “Look, leave it to me and we will have a talk about it.” And anyway, he went and seen his superiors and they talked, and they gave me a special licence. … they gave me a written licence. I still had to pay the 15 bob, you know, so they got a quid out of me. But it gave me a special licence to go fishing with my old man.
On Selling Fish from the Pier
“Well, where the Lagoon Pier is now – that’s a pier. The original pier was a breakwater. Now there were two piers originally and they used to go all the way up to Rouse St. But when they filled the Lagoon in, that made it two shorter piers. But the short pier is where they used to sell the fish. And I can remember – as back as far as I can go, I can remember four or five boats there alongside the pier of a Sunday morning selling fish.
But in 1951, in February 1951 we got a really bad storm, and all the boats in the harbour got smashed up. And after it was over the only boat left floating in the harbour was the Volunteer, my old man’s boat. And there was another boat on the pier. There used to be a crane on the pier. They used to lift the boats out of the water to paint them. And there was another one of the fishing boats, a bloke named Roy Jones owned it, and he had it on the pier painting it, so he survived it, but the rest of them either washed up on the beach or sank. And what there was of them in them days, they were all old blokes, getting old. And that was the end of them. They didn’t replace the boats, they just turned it up.
For full transcripts of these conversations and more Visit the City of Port Phillip history and Heritage website
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EDITOR // Mark Chew