June 16th
We began today with a breakfast of champions. No not Wheatties, a cemetery! Thankfully, we did not have an interlocutor to the underworld and were allowed to quickly walk through instead of having to hear about the stonemasonry of each and every gravestone.
Then it was on to Eden’s Killer Whale Museum: a beautiful museum that boasts a stocky lighthouse and permanent exhibitions on orcas and whaling. There was also a temporary exhibition commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the closure of Eden’s cannery: an event that put a vast number of locals out of work.
Part of the Cannery Commemoration in the Museum
The display sparked me to poke around town after lunch looking for ex-cannery workers to see if they thought Eden had recovered since the closure. I tracked down few ex-workers that would talk to me but their responses were somewhat mixed. Some said the town had fully recovered and some said you only had to look at all the vacant shops on Main Street (and I can attest that there are many) to see that Eden was obviously still struggling.
Ex-Cannery Workers and current Bi-Lo employees Sheryl and Nicole
After talking to the ex-cannery workers I made my way down to the Wharf to talk to the fishermen about whether fishing as an industry was indeed in decline as many townspeople had claimed.
Butch and Rob, fishermen
Their answers were more definitive with all of them agreeing that the fishing industry in Eden is floundering (sorry, I had to). I’m trying to hone in on a sharper angle or perhaps divide what I learned today into two separate articles: one on the ex-cannery workers and how they personally have recovered after the cannery closing and the second on why the government has rescinded almost 60% of fishing licenses in Eden over the past few years. They government claims its for conservation purposes but one burly old bloke I talked to, appropriately named Butch says “fishsticks!” Well actually he didn’t say that, but he could have. In any case, it might make an interesting piece to figure out whether the scaling back (jeeez, I just can’t stop) of fishing in the area was at all related to the closure of the cannery. The contemporaneity would suggest that the two events were in fact connected and that perhaps the repealing of the fishing licenses was an attempt to prevent the re-opening of the cannery by depriving it of stock. Very fishy…
In addition to being an interesting journalistic endeavor, walking around the Wharf was a pretty uncanny experience. First of all, I was the only female on the entire Wharf – a fact that immediately aroused curiosity and a whole ton of confusion. I amusedly watched the mystified fishermen watch me and I could almost see their thought bubbles “What the hell is that sheila upto? Must be bonkers.”
After I finished talking to the fishermen and tugboat operators I lingered on the dock snapping photos. There is something very mystical about winter sunlight in Australia and the effect was heightened by the bay and presence of a light fog. The way the golden rays bathed the boats lent the dock a romantic air. Suddenly, the stank odor of fish was no longer vomit-inducing but invigorating in its raw authenticity. The light transformed the horrifying sight of the fishermen beheading their catches into a scene of artists skillfully practicing their trade. The Wharf seemed an industrial paradise: totally peaceful but all the while efficient.
Wharf
Then the sun set and the wretched stench of fish guts nearly bowled me over so I said my goodbyes to my new pals and made the long trek up the hill to “Eagle Heights” the motel units where we’re staying.
June 17th
This morning it was off to Ben Boyd national park where we visited Boyd’s tower and Davidson’s Whaling Station. As I looked up at Boyd’s dilapidated tower, I was reminded of “Ozymandius” the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that goes:
“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
No Thriving City Here (Beautiful Beach Though)
Next we visited Davidson’s Whaling station – the longest running of all Australian shore based whaling stations. From the 1860s through the Depression years of the 1930’s, successive generations of the Davidson family used the station to slice the blubber off of the whales and eventually boil it down to oil. The Davidson’s were also renowned for having especially good relationships with the Killer Whales in the area. The orcas reportedly forced passing Baleen whales into the bay, harassing them unitl the whaling crews arrived. They were then rewarded with the lips and tongue after the whalers had successfully killed their prey.
After lunching at the Seahorse Inn, a boutique hotel in Boydtown that began as part of Boyd’s development before it was abandoned, I spent the remainder of the afternoon on the Wharf searching for more information that might help me develop the article I intended to write on the closure of the wharf and its possible connection with the rescinding of fishing licenses. However, after talking to a few fishermen who informed me that the fish they caught around the bay (mostly breem and flatheads) were not the types they used in the cannery (Bluefin tuna and salmon) and therefore there could be no connection. With that story shot, I poked around for a new one and found it in the form of an outlandishly swanky café located on the end of the Wharf.
Sandwiched between two take-out clam shacks, the “Wharfside Café” is oddly cosmopolitan. The interior design is stunning. Rich navy walls and ceilings, complemented by pop art paintings of fish and lights shaped like portholes create an ambiance of retro-maritime chic. In addition to cheaper Eden standards like fried shrimp and fish and chips, the menu also offers higher-end fare such as fresh mussels and grilled fish topped with coconut shrimp.
Bar at Wharfside Cafe
Intrigued by how such a sophisticated eatery ended up on Eden’s utterly untouristy Wharf I sat down with the Wharfside café’s owner and chef, Diana Stojanovic. Diana explained that the café owes its fashionable décor to her husband, an interior designer who helped her refurbish the space when she opened “Wharfside Café” 9 years ago. Though she insists that her café offers something for everyone, she founded Wharfside with the intention of attracting tourists (including drivers passing by Eden as few people actually stay overnight in the town except en route to go elsewhere). In any case I think I have enough info from her to do a fluffy restaurant profile/review. As I mentioned before reviewing is the form of travel writing that I’m least interested in but as far as reviews go I think this one will be fairly engaging to write just because of how incongruous the café is with its environment.
The more people I talk to and the more towns I visit, the more I become convinced that I want to pursue travel journalism in some form. Increasingly I feel like I’m able to connect with the places I travel to, and get the inhabitants to open up. What form of travel journalism I aspire to (writing, broadcast or a combination of the two) remains to be seen but I’m becoming ever more resolved to do it in some manner. I’m drawn towards writing because I love to write and I think that people are more articulate and open without cameras and a camera crew around but by the same token, video captures things that writing can’t and allows people to see exactly what the travel journalist is experiencing. Ideally I’d love to do both but they’re both such difficult fields to break into that I may have to become more realistic at some point. But for now, a girl can dream.
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