TOPIC:

If you want fresh mussels, can swim and dive then go to the Sorrento shark net, abudance is not how the net repair diver described it, weighs it down. Best to stay on the inside of the barrier.

The repairer said they get a high pressure jet and just blow them off.

hey do you remember when we used to get bucketfuls in various spots on the Swan on those spring to summer nights mate ???
king prawn runs & the odd squid swarm then back to mum's for the garlic butter & bread treatment mmmmmm
ah shit that made me hungry

At the end of the old Rockingham railway jetty in the 60's/70's for good size mussels.

My brother was a good diver.

Ah, the simple things.

Devonleigh wrote:
My brother was a good diver.

Looking at your avatar, that goes without saying.

I spent a couple of years in Mandurah in the 80’s and the best mussels were on the sticks in the estuary just below the water line. Trouble was that one year a certain bunch of people came through and took every single one - even the baby ones.

The prawns running under the Mandurah bridge, it was just amazing. My brother would walk the bridge and if he saw anything undersized he would pick their basket up and throw them back into the water. Then they would abuse him, he didn't understand what they were saying but they were angry. What they started to do, anything undersized was put into a blender and the mixture was used as fillers at the local takeaway. Dim Sims and all that stuff.

Mandurah in the 60s & 70s........bloody good memories.

My old man, with help from me and my big brother, built a shack in Miami in the mid-60s. Put the wood frames together at the Gillon & Osboine Builders yard in Innaloo (just down from the Metro Drive-in), and transported on the back of the company truck down to Mandurah, where they were stood up on the already laid concrete pad.

Thereafter, it was blueys from the estuary, and tailor and kingies from the rocks, as often as you were there, and wanted a feed.

The crabs, and the fresh fish, were accompanied by freshly baked white square loaf from the bakery in the main drag in Mandurah. Topped off with a bit of vinegar, and black pepper....... my mouth is watering just writing this.

Then a bit later in the early 70s, with my newly minted father-in-law. 3 hours crabbing - 2 full sugar bags (remember them museum.wa.gov.au/online-collections/content/H1996.483) of large, succulent blueys. All of legal size, but in those days, no "bag" limits. And not a morsel went to waste.


Edit - on reflection, they were wheat bags .... about the same size.

jackspratt wrote: Mandurah in the 60s & 70s........bloody good memories.

My old man, with help from me and my big brother, built a shack in Miami in the mid-60s. Put the wood frames together at the Gillon & Osboine Builders yard in Innaloo (just down from the Metro Drive-in), and transported on the back of the company truck down to Mandurah, where they were stood up on the already laid concrete pad.

Thereafter, it was blueys from the estuary, and tailor and kingies from the rocks, as often as you were there, and wanted a feed.

The crabs, and the fresh fish, were accompanied by freshly baked white square loaf from the bakery in the main drag in Mandurah. Topped off with a bit of vinegar, and black pepper....... my mouth is watering just writing this.

Then a bit later in the early 70s, with my newly minted father-in-law. 3 hours crabbing - 2 full sugar bags (remember them museum.wa.gov.au/online-collections/content/H1996.483) of large, succulent blueys. All of legal size, but in those days, no "bag" limits. And not a morsel went to waste.


Edit - on reflection, they were wheat bags .... about the same size.

Actually on reflection a sugar bag only held 70lb or 5 stone. A wheat bag held 180lb or 3 bushels.. That bastard bridge at Hall's Head was shocking most afternoons around 4pm onwards especially going south...

Yep, you are right, LS.

Sugar bag 77cm x 42cm

Wheat bag 90cm x 56cm

It was definitely the latter.