MCKEAG'S DIVE BUDDY. All you have to do is wind the compressor windlass. Fresh air is pumped to the diver, complete with outboard exhaust, stale smells of old bait and fresh farts. LOCAL, BRUNSWICK HEADS, PRAWNS, YUM YUM. The Prawn Trawler men, (and woman), lead a hard working life. Regrettably some have paid the ultimate price. We have had our share of tragic events in ‘our patch', many boats have foundered in or off the BRUNZ BAR, and this woeful history goes way back to the Cedar Boats and the small coastal ships that dared to venture inside the river entrance. http://www.brunswickvalley.com.au/history.html will give you some interesting facts on the BRUNSWICK VALLEY. PROP FOULED, ANCHORED AND WAITING. McKeag and me are going on about our business this day when a call for assistance comes from one of our Trawlers. The poor buggers are anchored just of the Bar mouth, 20 meters of manila rope is wound around the prop and prop shaft, and their going nowhere. A diver and untervasser gear is required, guess who and what? McKeag and the trusty HOOKAH, that's what, OH and his DIVE BUDDY. In quick time we load the dive gear on board ‘GOTCHA' AND HEAD OUT TO OFFER ASSISTANCE. Can't remember the boats name, must find out from McKeag. Fortunately the weather conditions were quite good, the bar reasonably flat. The trawler was anchored about 400 metres from the bar mouth. We come along side our stricken boat and the diver and his mate set about preparing for a salvage job. ‘Keggie dons his wet suit and dive helmet, I check and double check the air line and give it a jolly good pump out. Just to get the ‘cobwebs' and the mud wasps from the tubing. We hang off the trawler, and turn off the outboard motor, we don't want to asphyxiate the diver, and he would be most upset. Our diver is ready and over the side, ‘Keggie test his breathing apparatus and down he goes under the stern of the boat, with a large, very sharp knife at the ready. As he descends the DIVE BUDDY pays out the air line and the safety line, winding on the air compressor handle, hope it's pumping and not sucking. JOB DONE, NOW THE ‘PAYOFF'. It seems like an eternity, while in fact it's only about 10 minutes before the signal to haul in is transmitted along the rescue line, our intrepid diver surface and indicates "job done". The ‘skipper and his ‘deckie' are ever so thankful, "but can you do us a favor and take the nights catch back to the Co-OP?". Not a problem for us blokes. So around 8 tubs of fresh ‘Kingies' are transferred to the GOTCHA, this represents many hundreds of dollars in revenue. The boys thank us again and McKeag and I set off back to offload ‘the catch'. Then for some reason, GOTCHA wants to stop about 100 meters off the bar mouth, I swear we ate a kilo of prawns before the old boat would move. The boys on the trawler were waving and shouting, although with a smile on their face. TROLLING FOR MACKEREL. A fairly comment event this, for a lot surface fish actually, although for us we preferred to anchor and burley, set the rods and sit back and relax.. Maybe drop a hand line or two. Outboards don't seem to like to motor at very low revs. This little bit of a story concerns NED COOK, he was a fisherman of note from these parts, Ned had a fairly serious cat hulled fishing boat, twin motors with a 10 horse trolling outboard mounted on the transom. The intrepid diver and his mate have another job around the time of the prior story; we have to salvage Ned's little motor. It seems a little bit of corrosive action occurred this day, the motor bracket gives up the ‘ghost', and the motor disappears into 10 fathoms off NEW BRIGHTON. The ‘salvage divers' are called to retrieve Ned's motor. Now I'm not much of a diver myself, 10 fathoms is approx. 60 feet, no way have I been that deep. McKeag does not have a problem. We have been directed to the area where Ned has taken ‘land marks', ‘Keggie takes a couple of dives and locates the sunken motor, he takes a salvage rope, attaches it to the motor and up she comes. We return back to the boat ramp, "Cookie' races home and dunks the motor in a 44 gal. Drum of fresh water, the plugs have been removed and the fresh water flushes away the briny. He sets up the motor on a bracket, attaches a hose to the water intake. He fills the cylinders with petrol and outboard oil; pulls on the starter cord a couple of times, sprays the motor with WD40, REPLACES THE CLEANED PLUGS, yanks on the starter cord and bugger me if she don't start. After 2 days in the salt water.

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