18. Old Ben

Recently, while I was walking with Molly, he told me that a pack of twenty Bull Sharks had been seen in the Brisbane River. This piqued my curiosity. Whose ears don’t prick up when they hear the word “shark?” It also awoke an old memory about my own shark spotting, but more on that later. First, walk with me a bit through the morning.

When Molly and I reached the pier, we found Jules busy looking after the crab pots which she and Logan had lowered into the water. As Logan was fishing somewhere further down the path this morning, the job of pulling the pots up and checking on them fell to Jules. Two of these were “drop pots”, pots which remain open at one end and must be checked frequently because the crabs tend to come in, “have a good feed” and then swim out again.

Jules told me that having to handle the crabs on her own was her least favourite job. This morning she had already collected two “sandies” and now she was worried that there might be a mud crab in one of the other pots. “They’re vicious”, she said.

Further on, I caught up with Dan who was fishing nearby. When he heard Molly’s account of the bull sharks in the Brisbane River, he was not surprised. He commented that they were being caught off the pier as well and that the reason this was quite common was because they prefer the shallow water in many parts of Moreton Bay. They’re attracted by the stingrays which are plentiful at certain times of the year.

Bull sharks tend to be aggressive and can grow quite big, up to 11 feet in length. Despite this, I have seen boys and girls jumping off the pier here in the summer for a swim, and I have to wonder if they realise how big a risk they are taking. In the past, there used to be shark netting, but these barriers were removed many years ago. From my reading I’ve learned that in the 1900s there were swimming enclosures attached to the pier, with segregated areas for men and women, and that in the 1930s these were protected by a stone wall and shark nets. 

Another place where people could swim was in a bathing pool off Flinders Avenue which filled up with sea water from the incoming tide and which also had shark netting installed. However, in one of the Sandgate Museum’s booklets it was stated that both a grey nurse shark and a shovel nose shark had managed to get into that pool.

Bull sharks, Hammerhead sharks, Tiger sharks and several other shark species, even occasionally Great Whites, are all known to be present in Moreton Bay, but so far I’ve not seen any here myself. However, in 1956, I did manage to see many of them in another part of the world. Yes, another ship story!

In 1956, aged 20, I worked as a steward on cargo ships and we had arrived in Jeddah in the Red Sea. We were there to disembark more than a thousand deck passengers, Indonesian Muslims who were bound for their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.

As the ship was closing in on the jetty, I noticed what seemed to me to be a frenzy of sharks alongside. In those days there were many sharks in the Red Sea, including Hammerheads and Tiger sharks, which appeared to be particularly attracted to the port area.

When the deck passengers had left us, I noticed that one of the “dhows” (local sailing ships) next to our ship had capsized, and a few of the local boatmen were in the water trying to retrieve the timber cargo that was floating around. I took some photos of this, and I remember being very worried that they might be attacked by the sharks there.

In later posts I hope to tell you more about the hajj, but for this story I would like to finish with a tale about “Old Ben”, a huge shark caught by local fishermen.

I recently acquired a publication from the Sandgate Museum entitled “The Largest Ships”, researched and compiled by Mr Geoff Drew. It contains a great deal of interesting information and a collection of “Pier Memories”. The booklet is for sale for a small sum at the Museum. One of these pier memories was by Mr Bert Midgley and it read:

“All the local pier fishermen in Shorncliffe knew “Old Ben”. He was a huge shark sighted regularly in the pier area and became a local identity.

He was probably a grey nurse – and a very sizable, and well respected grey nurse.

The fisherman who tried to catch him used a rope for the line with a piece of chain attached to the hook, and would throw burley into the water.

The day he was caught there was a huge kerfuffle. They dragged Old Ben in, nearly ripping out his jaw, and then had to smash the bottom rail of the pier to haul him up.”

I don’t know when Old Ben was caught but I guess it would have been many years ago. On all my walks, I’ve never heard of any other shark being referred to as a “local identity” or as “well-respected”. “Old Ben” seems to have been unique. What I do know is that there are still many more big sharks out in the Bay but that, unfortunately, they’ll have to remain nameless.

O.P.

P.S. Next week’s story is entitled “Heaps of Pike”.  Pike are found in Dutch rivers as well as in Moreton Bay.