Mount Dromedary rises nearby, overloking the bay and breakwater entrance, and Montague Island can be clearly seen from the shore. Boats of all sizes, from tiny tinnies to lumbering commercial trawlers, go in and out of the harbor all day. It is a highway of activity on the sea.
I fish the sunset off the breakwater using the yellowfin I caught this morning in Eden, hoping to hook up to some Australian Salmon or Tailor. I manage to reel in a Sweep that is a little smaller than the bait I am using, tenacious little fucker. The Canadian does her best to attract the fish by dancing on the rocks to her iPod soundtrack, the local resident Fairy Penguins are too clever and manage to catch all the fish that I would have otherwise hauled in.
The fishless session is nonetheless very rewarding: me, the ocean at my feet, the salt in my face, my finger on the line waiting eagerly for the tap tap tap of a biting fish, and the sun bursting below the massive grey cloudbank stretching away above, a blazing ball of yellow fading to orange, sinking spectacularly below the low mountain ranges in the distance.
No matter, we are still able to enjoy fresh fish for dinner that night at the Bermagui Hotel, which has enjoyed a serious facelift since the last time I was here – over 15 years ago. Gone is the creaky staircase and the common room at the top of the stairs with the rickety old honky-tonk piano and faded black and white prints of fisherman and their prize catches on the wall.
Nowadays, the rooms at the Bermagui Hotel are painted in peach tones with matching peachy towels and linens; you can even order your room with a spa bath. Grandpa would be rolling over in his grave.
Still, the grizzly characters at the bar and crumbling black and white photos of fishermen and their prize catches give testimony to its rough and tumble maritime past. The firecrackers let off in the parking lot on Saturday night by drunken locals also helped…
By the way, highly recommend you order the fish & chips, with a dozen mussels baked in garlic butter on the side….freshest you are likely to get anywhere…
And Eden…. beautiful Eden….. the name conjures up visions of paradise and utopia… which I gues it is, if you are into sleepy fishing towns… Twofold Bay stretches out before you as you round a bend in the highway, the sparkling sapphire ocean twinkling in the sunlight. Same sweet/salty fishing town aroma too, wafting into the open window of the car, even at 100 km/h.
The fish here jump onto my hooks, and once I find the school of yellowtail, I know that I can hook up with each cast. They are too small to be any fun, but I bag a half-dozen anyways to use as bait for bigger stuff later on.
This town is even more alive to me because I have read The Killers of Eden, a fictional tale based on thoroughly researched facts about Old Tom and his pod of wild Orca who worked with two generations of Whaling Families to help round up Right and Blue Whales. The only documented case in the world of wild Orca working in partnership with humans, the Killers would identify a target whale and alert the humans by splashing about in the bay.
“Rusho!” This cry would ring throughout the town as the whalers dropped everything and rushed to their wooden vessels in the race to row out and be the first team to chase down their prey. The pod of Killers would split into three groups, one which cut off the whale’s exit path to the open ocean, the other to harass it from below and prevent it from diving to safety, and the third team to harass and attack the whale from its flanks, sometimes even jumping on the whale to cover its blowhole.
Meanwhile the human team would close in on their boats and harpoon the poor victim, and give chase to the whale until they were close enough to deal its death blow – a lance to the heart. The Killers’ reward for all of this? The corpse would sink to the ocean floor, where they would feast on the whale’s tongue [all 4 tonnes of it], until the gases in the decomposing corpse would float the whale’s body a couple days later for the humans to drag in for processing.
There is even a genuine Moby Dick-style story documented in the Killer Whale Museum about a man who was swallowed whole by a Sperm Whale in its death throes, and survived 48 hours in the oxygen-rich stomach of the giant. When he was cut out of the whale’s stomach, his skin and hair had been permanently bleached by the digestive juices inside its belly, and the man lived for another 12 years or so after the incident.
Funny how reading a novel with a little history about a place can serve to bring your experience of that place so much more alive… and certainly give an appreciation for how far we have come in so short a time.
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