Since my early days when I started fishing as a young boy I soon realised the sea and coastline should be afforded respect. It could be a dangerous place to spend your time and I learned some early lessons.

This era was the pre-package holiday years, so local families holidayed mostly at home and went off for day trips. The local sea shore in the summer was widely used, it was this huge playground for me and my mates. Harrington Beach on a hot sunny summers day would be packed with hundreds of people. Families and teenagers laid on their towels sunbathing, eating ice creams and swimming in the sea. The majority of local men worked at the steelworks at Mossbay, they took advantage of the hot sunny weather to take a break from the smoke and dust that belched from the steelworks furnaces, along with their families. The beaches were not the most attractive, having suffered from decades of industrial scale dumping of molten slag from the iron works that were once close to the shoreline. Over time the sea had broken a lot of it up, leaving a rocky seaweed covered foreshore with a band of sand towards the low water mark.

As mentioned in a previous article trying to avoiding the raw sewage in the water whilst swimming in the sea was one health hazard, but there were a few more. Jelly fish were numerous, floating around with the currents and when swimming I had on a few occasions brushed against their trailing tentacles resulting in getting stung. More irritating than painful, like a nettle sting leaving a red rash. The worst hazard I encountered floating in the water was sticky bitumen tar often found stuck to the rocks and deposited on the sand. It probably originated from the steelworks and small lumps of it was washed up on the tide. On one hot sunny day I managed to get some on my foot, what an horrible black mess, spread like a dark treacle like jam. I tried unsuccessfully to wipe it off but only managed to spread it further over my foot and toes. Not wanting to get it on my sandals I walked around barefoot, the black sticky tar absorbing the strong suns rays and quickly heating up! My foot felt as though it was being painfully roasted! Disappointed I had to leave the shore early I made my way home where my Mum came to the rescue and cleaned it off. Lesson learned – avoid the bobbing turds, jellyfish and being boiled alive in bitumen tar!

At Harrington, the pier was built at right angles to a short, but high sandstone sea wall that gave protection to the inner harbour area. The wall was quite wide on top and as kids we would walk along it, spend time sitting down watching people spending their day sun bathing and swimming. The base of the wall on the beach was a popular area for families to lay down a towel, sunbathe and walk into the water for a swim. On one particular hot sunny day for some reason I was running along the wall quite close to the edge, when I tripped and fell the 20 feet or so onto the beach below. Luckily for me, but not so luckily for the man sunbathing below I landed on! With him breaking my fall I was saved serious injury apart from a painful leg. The poor man was laid out, eyes closed enjoying the warm sun, when this skinny, ginger haired kid in shorts dropped out of the sky and landed squarely in his midriff like a sack of potatoes! I painfully scrambled onto my feet in shock, but not as shocked as the man who was now sat up trying to re-inflate his crushed lungs! Once he had got his breathing back to some normality he started to berate me with some choice words, whereupon his wife who was laid beside him verbally leapt to my defence: “leave the young lad alone, he could have broken an arm or leg or even his neck”. Whilst the lady defended me I took the opportunity to limp away. I would like to thank this man who saved me from a possible terminal injury and I was glad I did not read the headline in the local paper that: ‘man dies of internal injuries sustained whilst sunbathing on seashore’. Lesson learnt – Do not run along sea walls!

I managed to survive a few more years to the age of about 13-14 years old when my mate Gary and I decided to borrow my older brothers small dinghy that was left overturned on the top of the shore next to the pier. This was common practice for local small boat owners who would leave them with a launching trolley underneath. When going fishing they would wheel their boat down the nearby launching ramp into the sea. I had wheeled the oars, anchor, British Seagull 5 horsepower outboard engine and a couple of hand lines to fish with down to the shore earlier on a small hand cart. Once all the gear was sorted out, Gary and I launched the wooden 14 foot clinker built boat, down the ramp beside the pier. After a few pulls on the outboard starter rope the engine spluttered into life and we were soon chugging along out past the pier end. We headed north through the calm clear water to fish in the kelp bed off the Steelworks at Mossbay, a favourite cod mark for local boat anglers.

Earlier we had made a 20 hook longline up with two weights, one at each end and a marker bouy attached. Quickly baited with lugworm we eagerly cast it over the side anticipating catching a few cod. We then motored a little distance away to start our fishing with the handlines. Unfortunately the huge shoals of pouting were hitting our baits as soon as they came anywhere near the sea bed. We moved position several times to no avail, we could not get through these little devils to the more valuable cod. After a few hours and completely frustrated with the pouting we decided to go and retrieve the longline.

The tide had been ebbing for a number of hours now and a noticeable breeze had sprung up. The south westerly wind was blowing against the ebbing tide, lifting the waves into quite a big swell! Pulling the longline in we were pleased to see a plump cod about 4lbs on one of the hooks. This normally would have been an exciting talking point for us catching a nice size fish, but we were more concerned about getting back to the beach safely. We headed towards Harrington as quickly as the 5 horsepower engine could push the boat. We knew we were going to have a problem landing on the beach, as we could see in the distance the large 6-8 foot surf crashing onto the sand!

As we neared our proposed landing area, the sandy beach in front of the pier, we had decided to turn the boat into the waves so they broke over the bow and didn’t swamp the stern. Before we had attempted this risky manoeuvre, a big wave picked up our small craft and we started hurtling towards the beach on its peak like a rather large surfboard! If the bows now turned slightly left or right we would be capsized! It being a sunny, warm evening the beach was busy with kids and adults enjoying themselves kicking balls about and building sandcastles. We carried out our surfing run towards the beach like a torpedo, our fingers clinging to the wooden seats, staring wide eyed dead ahead, absolutely terrified! We were attracting an audience from the onlookers on the beach, the adults alarmed, thinking us mad and the young kids oblivious to the danger we were in, thinking we were really cool! The wave took us right up the beach and gently deposited us on the sand, the outboard engine still running . Relieved was not the word, Gary and I coolly stepped out of the boat onto the firm sand. A group of kids came running up shouting “that looked great fun”. Gary and myself smiling with relief and still shaking grabbed the bow of the boat and pulled it further up the beach out of reach of the surging surf. Lesson learned – Do not take the sea for granted and get the weather forecast!

Those early experiences have obviously stuck in my memory and having a healthy respect for the sea environment is not a bad thing.