
Western Port and Port Phillp Bays.
BEING charged with turning a manuscript into a book for a friend is always an enormous honour and an exciting opportunity to learn. For the past year I have been editing and doing the layout of my friend John Jansson’s book A Source Book of Western Port Maritime History. Certainly I learnt many aspects of Word that I had not used before and, because John is a local and maritime historian, I also learnt an enormous amount about the prolific maritime trade and the land-based industries that trade has supported in Warn Marin Western Port.
In his extensive research for this source book, John discovered many references to the early colonial industries carried on in and around Warn Marin Western Port. Here are the main ones: Sealing, swanning, mangrove burning for barilla ash, wattle bark (mimosa) harvesting, a massive timber industry, coal exploration and mining, sheep import and export, oystering, illegal landing of Chinese immigrants, salt mining, fishing, crayfishing, pleasure cruising, boat building.
Several of these industries began 30 years before this part of Bunurong Boonwurrung Country saw a single permanent white colonist. At that time the area was like the lawless Wild West. Sealers were often escaped convicts, and well-versed in deprivation, and in receiving and inflicting brutality. They and their whaling counterparts took on mimosa harvesting and swanning (killing the swans for meat and quills) as side-lines during the sealing and whaling off-season. All of their activities brought them into the bay and into contact and conflict with the local Aboriginal people.
The final book will be ready sometime in 2025. Meanwhile, I promise to dip into its depths to share some gems of the bay’s maritime history in future essays.