As the abalone industry evolved so too did wet-suits, boats and breathing apparatus. John Black recalls how the evolution of early technology and the accessibility of material such as gelignite enabled divers to stay underwater and recover large items. The results were creative, adaptive and perhaps a little dangerous.

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NARRATOR: As the abolone industry evolved, so did wetsuits, boats and breathing gear. John Black remembers the evolution of early technology enabling divers to stay under water for longer. The results were creative, adaptive and perhaps a little dangerous.

JOHN BLACK: When we were diving for abalone was when we started to get wooden row floats and even surf skis, we’d use surf skis sometimes – and just anchor them and put a bag on the surf skis, put in abalone in and then paddle back. I you come across an old bit of wreckage or something you’d – what you could actually dive down and pick up and kick off the bottom and swim like blazes and then try and plonk it on your surf ski if you were in fairly shallow water. Again you could only do these of very calm days and you’d only abalone on calm days so you were in quite close.

We evolved into aluminium boats, Quintrex were a very popular boat at the time, with an outboard motor on it with wetsuits and we changed into – originally we did snorkel diving of course, and then we went to this big bottle system and this was before anyone I could recall made up what we called a hookah unit with an engine and a compressor on it; even though I’d seen one made out of an old motor bike engine once. It had one cylinder taken out and the other one would pump air. This bloke invented this thing but nobody was brave enough to use it. But, it was probably till abalone started to really kick on that guys started to try and invent things to stay down and get them off the bottom.

So when we’d be abalone diving with a old surf ski and you’d find an old wreck you’d sort of remember it in the back of your mind. So when our equipment got better we go back there. There was a place in - it may seem crazy now - there was place in Miranda in Sydney, it was called Penprase Hardware. You could drive in the back of Pentroses – they had a hardware shop at the front, down the back they had bricks and mortar and cement and everything else. And you could go to the store there and you could actually buy a box of gelignite. Of course, Sutherland south of Sydney was still pretty bushy, and that, and people were buying to get rid of rocks and blow trees out and all sorts of stuff. You could basically go there and buy a box of gelignite. So we’d drive in and get a box of gelignite and a box of instantaneous detonators and away we’d go. So we’d put that in the boat, not the whole box, but you’d take a few handfuls with you and you’d get a good flat day and you’d say “We’ll go back down to that wreck there was a couple of bits we couldn’t get off”. We’d put about two or three sticks of gelignite together and we’d put an electric det in one end, we’d poke it in with a skewer and put the det and join the two wires up. I suppose we were smart enough – we used to wrap the wire around the explosives. Then we’d swim down – there’d be bubbles coming out of it and we’d be looking at it say – “Jeez, I hope this is alright!” You’d put it where you reckoned it would do the most, sorta be the most beneficial to you, then you’d undo the wire and bring it back to the boat and put it across the battery and then give the bottom of the boat a belt. Then you’d wait 20 minutes and the water cleared and then you’d go back down to see how successful you were. That way we got a few portholes and a bit heavier stuff and we still hadn’t worked out how to – even some of the earlier divers down here hadn’t worked out the system of using lifting air bags.

I remember the boys, when I first started ab-diving same thing,they had hookah gear, they could get to the bottom and they’d get half a bag of abalone and then they’d try to swim like blazes to get to the top and I think it was one of the guys said one day, he had a plastic bag, he’d got his sugar bag full of abalone and then he blew the plastic bag up with his demand valve and held onto the plastic bag with one hand and the other bag with the other and then they decided why don’t they put the two together and they made these lifting bags and parachutes, as we call them. There was a necessity and somebody thought about it.

Back to the wrecks. It was before we had lifting bags and then you’d sometimes you’d get your boat in right over the top of the wreck and you’d dive down and you’d tie a rope around it and you’d be trying to heave it off the bottom. We tipped one boat over and numerous times we had sort of funny accidents with half filling boats with waves coming in. And we couldn’t let go because we’d tied up this dirty big bit of brass on the bottom and the waves were coming and you’d try to get out of the way – and too late you were gone. (laughter) We’d go and drop a bit of scrap metal off at the yard and we might get 50 bucks or something and you’re king of the kids for a while.

NARRATOR: To find out more about Victorian shipwrecks search the Victorian Heritage Database at http://heritage.vic.gov.au