1. Esperance

Introduction:

Most of this is made up.

Esperance is a fictional fishing village on the Halley River in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland, Australia in the year of 1969.

Though Esperance is fictional the same natural laws operate here as in the real world. They have gravity and weather and so on.

1969 was a real year but you’d be forgiven for thinking someone made it up.

It was the year John Gorton, on behalf of all Australians, supported Richard M Nixon in the carpet-bombing of Cambodia. Muhammad Ali didn’t and went to jail. 

Yasser Arafat took over the PLO. Muamar Gadaffi took over Libya. British troops took over Northern Ireland.

In 1969, Valium was the most popular drug.

In 1969, Sadie the Cleaning Lady was Australia’s number one hit song.

1969 was not a year you'd take seriously.

1969 is also the year of the great prawn-fishing boom in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Marine biologists from the CSIRO, having noticed its similarity to the Gulf of Mexico, asked this question: 

Might it provide similar commercial quantities of prawns?

The answer: Yep -shitloads.

The rush was on - the prawnrush. All sorts of fisherman converted their boats to otter-board trawlers and headed for the Gulf. People who’d never caught a fish in their lives sold up businesses to buy a boat and get in on the act. The men steamed round the coast of Australia while wives and girlfriends towed caravans across country to provide a land based home.

When they got there they found a place that was already fairly well established. There’s a kind of shantytown - the Barra Shacks set up by commercial barramundi fishermen. There’s The Lodge, a large concrete block and tile hotel that had been catering to sports fishermen who also came for the barramundi. A wharf has been built on the river with a prawn processing plant and support workshops. Prawn trawlers with their booms erect are tied three abreast bobbing against each other in the surge of the river. The musical underscore for this area is the groaning of tortured maritime timber and the ting-ting of metal in the rigging.

There’s a caravan park – with power! The powerhouse had been upgraded from the time (WW2) when it served the RAAF base. There’s a service station and the supermarket is almost finished.

Opposite the supermarket and catty cornered from the back of the plant, there’s a short street of six brand new prefab houses. The Company has built these for its executives. Each has a fenced front yard with one scrawny acacia tree.

On Friday nights you can dine alfresco courtesy of the entrepreneur Sad Les who has converted a hotdog vendor’s bicycle to provide deep fried barra fillets and soggy chips.

Welcome.

© Ray Lillis 2012