“ I grew up in Tassie and left at 21 because it was bloody cold and drove straight to Cairns. I’m an Aquaculturist by trade so I worked on giant Clams on the Barrier Reef, Prawn and Barramundi farms in Far North QLD and then went back to Tassie. I went on to Victoria and worked on their native fish species, trout and salmon. Being a trained Aquaculture Technician in the late 80’s was pretty rare so we were at the forefront of what now is the Australian Aquaculture industry. I returned to Tassie and worked on Oysters for a while. I’d had enough by my last stint in Victoria on a Salmon farm. It’s a hard game if you’re running the show. You could lose a million dollars worth of stock overnight. The pressure was huge and the money was shit back then.
There’s a massive Yabbie in Tasmania which is the world’s largest freshwater Cray. They had a total ban on catching them and that ban still hasn’t been lifted. They were declining rapidly due to the rivers being trashed due to logging, etc. They had some Scientists who were trying to catch an adult female and had no luck. Within the first day of me working there I caught 2 adult females. You just had to know where to go. That morphed into me becoming ‘The Lobster Man’ in Tassie.
I worked voluntarily for a while educating, going into schools, raising awareness and surveying. Lobsters can technically live forever. Their bodies and organs can regenerate pretty well. It’s disease and injury that usually take them out and when you’re 50 years old and the size of a small dog, you can’t hide. I became the face of the animal in Doco’s and media releases for the next 16 years. I still go back, that’s my job and I’m still called the Lobster Man (laughs). I also do assessments on river health near mines and basically tell them how they are impacting it. The bugs in the water tell you everything.
My ex wife and I moved up here from Tasmania 9 years ago because of our youngest son’s asthma. It was so bad we thought he’d go to hospital one day and not come out. Vincent was actually born on the side of the road. It was a 5 minute drive and he was not going to wait so we pulled over and he was born on the side of the Bass Highway.
We picked Lismore for the climate. I originally thought Ballina or Alstonville but Lismore just had more soul and diversity. I drove around Lismore and loved it. I can’t believe people knock it. It’s a good spot. We have little festivals going on. The Lantern Festival was brilliant, the Rainbow Festival was Wow! I come from conservative West Tasmania, if you see a busker with dreadlocks it’s an eye opener. I love the people here. I’ve lived in some really interesting spots but this beats them all. I did a degree here on Indigenous knowledge which was an amazing learning curve.
I live in Lismore so you can imagine what a joy it’s been with Covid. I go to Tasmania for work for 4 weeks at a time and stay in my shack. My 2 sons stay with their Mum in Goonellabah during that time. We have a very amicable relationship and our boys get lots of love. I started going out with my now partner Annie 3 months before Covid hit. She lives in Brisbane. We’ve been together 2 years. We’d planned to go to a Crayfish conference in Prague but Covid stopped that.
I had to get to Tassie for work and I got there 3 days before they shut the borders. I’ve had so many cancelled flights and changed plans as we all have due to this Pandemic. Obviously having my partner in QLD has been tough because they kept shutting the borders as well so we were waving across the border. It was bloody hard. We had 3 major lockdowns then heaps of smaller ones where we had to turn back. We bought a camper trailer and decided to go to Darwin 8 months ago for a road trip. We picked the kids up at Darwin airport and 24 hours later Darwin went into lockdown. Got back to Brisbane and they went into lockdown again. We haven’t been sick and we haven’t had people die but people’s mental health has been really tested throughout this time. We’ve struggled but I feel like one of the lucky ones.
I like the work I do and it’s important work. I’m the only bloke who goes around tagging these giant creatures and microchipping them. I’ve nearly died a couple of times…once when I was kayaking on the Frankland River. These rivers are full of 30 metre long logs and my kayak hit a branch and I was wedged under. My head was above water but it took me half hour to get out with the current against me. Three years ago I was working alone in a creek with concrete weirs. I’m used to working on greasy rocks but next minute both feet slipped from under me and I fell back hard onto concrete. I had a kayak helmet on and my head cracked the rock and the helmet. I was very lucky.
I’ve been nipped a couple of times by the Crays and they bloody hurt. They can break your arm. I’ve had a few run-ins with snakes including Tiger snakes. I work remote so my biggest fear is wild dogs. I have a decent size machete because some sites are 2 kms through old thick tea-tree scrub which is nearly impossible to penetrate.
The giant Freshwater Crays have basically changed the logging laws in Tassie. The buffer zones on creeks were 10 metre machinery exclusion zones but now it’s 30 metres either side. Buffer zones are incredibly important for streams and rivers so these guys have had more impact on the protection of the environment than any other animal in the state and that’s been one of my legacies. I didn’t get the laws in but the publicity certainly didn’t hurt.”