WEBVTT - A poachers' paradise? 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:04.240 The whole entrance is covered by a giant octopus. And 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.040 he thought, oh no, this is where the giant octopus 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:11.760 lives in this hole, and I'm in its way. And 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:15.520 that he said, the tentacles were enormously long and very powerful, 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:17.640 and in the end he had to hack his way out. 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.400 They would equip themselves with his boats, so they would 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:24.640 be using his boat to chase him. So he would 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:26.960 have to build one that's a bit faster in order 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.920 to stay one step ahead of them. I'm Andrew Rule 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:34.480 his life and crimes. Recent news that the Victorian state 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.880 government has sacked half of the people who have boots 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.040 on the ground and boats in the water to stop 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:47.640 poaching of our natural resources. This is very bad news 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:53.680 for all Victorians. Already it seems that the poaches, the thieves, 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.960 the sneaky people are encroaching on diminishing resources, diminishing fisheries. 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.120 Here are some small stories that tell us about a 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:07.600 bigger truth. Early morning walkers walking from Point Lonstyle to 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:12.040 Queenscliff around the bay. There's a path there people often 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.760 go walking early in the morning. Among them asks some 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.720 people who get out before dawn, and those people say 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.520 that sometimes when there are low tides, they notice a 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.039 peculiar thing. They see men coming out of the water 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:28.240 in wetsuits, with masks on and with often a spear 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.640 gun in one hand and a netting bag under the other. 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.320 They have no doubt that these people are in fact 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:39.600 swimming across into the nearby marine park, and they also 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:44.040 have no doubt that they're probably taking abaloni. And one 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.080 of the reasons I think that is that these people 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:49.760 never engage with locals who are walking past. When they 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:54.240 see them, they sprint towards their cars. They leave their 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:57.600 masks on, and they run towards their cars and jump 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.160 in the cars and drive away in to the dawnlight. 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.200 And this would suggest that they're up to no good. 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.160 Now around the corner in Queenscliff and Saint Leonard's and 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.480 across the bay places like Wherriby, South Williamstown and so on, 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.000 there are boats coming in and they will have their 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:20.200 bag limit of flathead or whiting or squid, whatever it 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.560 is that's going at that stage. And if there are 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.960 no fisheries offices around, or if they think that there 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.120 will be no fisheries officers around, the chances are that 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:34.240 some of these people the dishonest ones, the opportunists, the thieves, 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:39.959 will take a look around, take their bag, limit bag ashore, 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:42.960 stash it somewhere in an eski or in a friend's 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:47.880 car or whatever, and then within a little while reappear 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:51.320 on the water for a fresh lot of fishing. Now 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.720 they might change their jumpers, they might move things around 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:56.360 a bit, They might go and have a cup of 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.520 coffee and then return. But those people, if they've got 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.960 a chance to get away with it, some of them will, 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.200 and they go out and they get more fish, more squid. 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.640 And some of them, of course, are selling it on 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.280 the black market to restaurants and to fish shops and 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:16.440 the like for cash, because if they get the opportunity 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:19.079 to do it, they will do it. This is human nature. 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:22.560 And the only thing that stands between human nature and 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:27.200 theft or any other sort of wrongdoing is the law 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.959 and the enforcement of the law. The law doesn't really 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:35.800 work unless most of us think that it. 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:37.119 Will be enforced. 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.200 And just as we don't drive through red lights because 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.720 there are cameras there to record the fact and record 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:48.200 our car registration numbers, people who go fishing, many of 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:52.800 them obey the laws because they don't want to be 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.720 caught breaking them, and so they don't bring in undersized fish, 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.960 they don't bring in twice the bag limit because they 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:02.520 don't want to be grabbed for doing it, because if 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.000 you are grabbed, the penalties are quite severe. So if 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:08.960 the officers aren't around, it's a case of when the 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:12.840 cat's away, the mice will play. And you can guarantee 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.480 that these people, some of them, if they're not filling 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.960 freezers at the expense of more honest anglers, you can 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:23.800 bet they're actually selling to restaurants for cash. Now, when 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:26.640 the government announced that they were going to cut the 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:31.160 numbers of fisheries officers in half, there was a bureaucrat, 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:36.359 a dithering bureaucrat, who said a ridiculous thing. He said 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:42.719 that recreational anglers would regulate themselves. He said something like, 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.640 there's not a big problem, is there, Because if someone 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.120 comes into the boat ramp, you know, boasting that they've 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.680 got three hundred fish, they'll get a punch on the nose, 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:59.279 won't they. And essentially he's saying that other anglers, other 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:04.480 fishes should police their fellow anglers, and you inspect their 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.080 catch and if they think they've got too many fish 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.400 punch them on the nose. Now, that is a very 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.640 silly thing, because no one is going to go and 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.280 inspect other people's catch. No one is going to inspect 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:23.160 the catch of someone who's by definition armed. People who 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.039 go fishing have knives, fishing knives to fill it fish. 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.960 You aren't going to insert yourself into that conversation, particularly 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:35.360 with the thought of people that you suspect might be 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.800 poaching fish, because by definition they're going to be law 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:45.040 breakers and nasty pieces of work and possibly threatening and defensive. 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.880 So it's exactly what you would not do. And I'm 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.720 sure that the police would not advocate doing it. And 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:56.920 why some lunatic bureaucrat would think that was a good 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:00.720 thing to say, I don't know, but it's certainly not 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:04.599 sustainable or sensible. If anyone acted on it, it could in 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.720 fact lead to some very ugly scenes, and you know, 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.599 we could end up with cases in court where the 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.600 defense is well, you know, we heard a bureaucrat tell 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.200 us that we should police other fishermen, and I just 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.800 tried to do it, and you know, then he tried 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:23.600 to stab me and then I hit him with a boathook. 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:26.000 It's not going to wash. It's not going to go 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:29.680 well in court. So I think the idea of vigilantes 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.760 doing it wild West style and starting some fishing war 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:38.040 is absolutely ridiculous and it distracts us from the realities 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.680 of this situation. It's hard to believe that government bean 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:48.080 counters would actually believe their own propaganda. The evidence is 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.640 that abaloni and other marine life are under attack, and 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.080 that's there for anyone to see. That's an uncomfortable fact 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.839 for the state government. And the reality is if you 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:03.960 cut the fish officers numbers in half, this can only 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:07.599 get worse. Now every other abaloney fishery in the world, 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:11.120 and I'm talking from South Africa to northern California to 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:17.440 Southeast Asia has collapsed from overfishing and from poaching that 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:23.120 ultimately escalated, particularly in South Africa, into pillaging. They just 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:27.240 raped and pillaged all the reefs until the reefs were 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.200 bare of abalone, all shell fish. And once that happens, 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.400 there is no breeding stock at all. It cannot breed 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:39.120 up again. It cannot replace itself because all the breeding 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.280 stock is gone. The only way to replenish it would 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.480 be to introduce stock from somewhere else and try and 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:46.560 graft it onto. 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.120 Those reefs, which is. 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:52.680 Probably not going to happen, so once gone, it's gone 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:53.640 for life. 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:55.239 Really pretty well. 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:59.240 Now at this point in Victoria's history, it would seem 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.880 that our abalone industry, and that's what it is, is 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:07.440 teetering between poaching which has gone on for decades, some 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.320 sort of poaching, and the sort of free range pillaging 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:12.880 that could destroy it. 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:14.560 We're probably at. 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.520 A tipping point in our history, and there's a couple 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:21.120 of reasons for that. The thing that's tipping us over 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:25.880 the edge is this willingness for the government to run 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.440 the risk of not policing it properly. The signs that 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:34.120 this is happening increasingly are all around us now. One 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.560 of my colleagues here at the Herald's son is a surfer, 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:39.520 and he tells me that he and his friends, and 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.440 he and his son, they go surfing in remote, out 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.240 of the way spots. One of the remote spots they 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:49.160 go to is a way around the coast on South Gippsland, 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.719 and it's hard to get to this particular place, as 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:56.080 he says, one hundred meter cliff and to get down 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:00.080 to the waves below at this very dangerous stretch of 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.079 water which can have good waves, which so it attracts 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:07.240 some surface not many. He said, You've got to slip 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:12.120 and slide down this very rough, dangerous track, down down 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.360 down through the rocky slopes and the shale and the 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:17.480 bush that sticks into you and all the rest of it. 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:19.760 And when you get down to the bottom, if the 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:23.520 conditions are suitable, you can get a good surf there. 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.360 But not a lot of people do this because you know, 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:28.000 you've got to climb back out again and so on. 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.800 And he said, the fascinating thing about this place, though, 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:36.280 is that around out of sight, pretty well out of sight, 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:40.440 there's a little hut being built of driftwood and crap. 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.120 Is the way this gorib driftwood and crap. So it's 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:44.440 a bit of brush and a bit of a few 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.520 rocks and driftwood, and this little shelter, crude little shelter 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.199 sort of blends into the environment. It's hard to see. 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:55.040 And inside it, he says, is a sauceman sitting over 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:58.080 a little campfire, and a few odds and means that 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:03.199 would indicate that somebody camps in that hut for several 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:07.160 hours and or overnight. And he said clearly what it 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:11.160 is is ab poaches. They're they're waiting for the tides 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.120 to turn from one tide to the next so that 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.360 they can go out duck diving for abs, you know, 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:20.680 maybe one hundred meters out or whatever it is. Because 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:25.000 because it's such a dangerous stretch of water and so inaccessible, 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.760 the abs there have had a chance to breed up, 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:34.760 and so it's a relatively rich reef for these poaches 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.679 to pillage. And he said, clearly that's what they're up to, 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.600 and he said the last thing he would want to 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.000 do would be to catch them at it, or to 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:48.080 try and discourage them from doing it, because they will 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:53.120 be armed with knives. And there's two things about ab poaches. 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:57.880 One is they want to avoid the attention of witnesses, 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:00.200 and if they can't do that, the other thing they 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.679 might want to do is to intimidate witnesses. Now, these 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:07.720 ab poaches, they're in a dangerous game. I've took to 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.199 some of these poaches over the years that they're sort 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:14.160 of highly organized, quite professional poaches. One of them, a 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.320 fellow in Tasmania, told me that the scariest thing that 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:20.880 ever happened to him was that he was underwater, and 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.240 he went into like a cave thing, a hole in 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.640 the rock underwater, and it was full of big fat 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.520 abaloni and he thought, how good's this. And he's in 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.960 there with his ab knife they call it. It's like 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.959 a long squared lever knife. And he's leaving abs off 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.840 and jamming him into his net bag and counting each 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.600 one's a fifty dollar note or whatever it is. And 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:49.200 suddenly he senses that it's gone darker, the water's darker, 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:52.880 and something brushes against him. He turns around and the 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:55.840 entrance to this hole. He's just in a hole. It's 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.600 only you know, big enough for him to get into. 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.240 It's only maybe a meat up high and a meter wide. 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.360 The whole entrance is covered by a giant octopus. And 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.160 he thought, oh no, this is where the giant octopus 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:13.640 lives in this hole, and I'm in its way. And 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:16.600 he was terrified. He said it was worse than being 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:20.600 near a shark. And he said the tentacles were enormously 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:22.880 long and very powerful, and in the end he had 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:25.560 to hack his way out using his knife. He had 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.040 to cut one of the tentacles to get past this 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.959 giant octopus. And I found that to be the most 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:36.080 not merish scenario you could think of. And he told 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:40.960 me other stories about his adventures as an abaloni diver. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.680 I think early doors he might have been a legal 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:48.600 abalone diver, and then at some point he had a 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.480 disagreement with the authorities and he kept doing it without 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.160 a license, and someone but he and another guy who 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.840 was a big diver in Tasmania, they loaded a real 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.040 small boat speedboat overloaded. He said, we had far too many. 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.400 We'd run across a big reef and we've got a 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.640 heap of abaloni and we were well down in the 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.400 water because of the weight of them. And we're speeding 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:14.680 back towards the. 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:15.800 I think it's up. 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.719 And he's strawn up on that northwest coast of Tasmania 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:22.280 and it's very lonely and there's not many people around, 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.720 and the weather's tough and the water is tough, he said, 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.920 we're speeding back and it's relatively dark, I think, and 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.640 they hit a thing called I think it's called the 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.720 needle or the pinnacle or something. It comes out of 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.280 the water a piece of rock and they've hit it 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:42.760 and they've smashed their boat into a thousand pieces and 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:45.959 he said they were both plunged deep into the water. 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:47.320 Both these divers. 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.040 Their boat's gone, it's finished, and there's all this wreckage 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.120 around them. He said, we both went down, down, down, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.320 And he said that he can measure how deep you're 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.000 going because he's a diver by the darkness of the water. 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:05.280 And he said it, you know, twenty feet it's this color, 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:07.360 and thirty feet it's darker. 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:07.440 And so on. 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:11.400 He said, we both ended up down so deep in 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.920 this black water and at the limit of our lungs. 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.559 They were down there for minutes, like two or three 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:22.320 minutes or more, and they were good divers who could 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.160 take a big breath. And he said, if we hadn't 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:29.920 had on our fins or flippers, if we had not 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.960 had our buoyant flippers on, we. 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:34.200 Probably both would have died. 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:36.320 Because he said, we had our boyant flippers on and 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.480 that helped lift us to the surface in time, and 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:44.520 then helped us to stay afloat to get into shore. 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:48.160 And the shore was a long long way, and he said, 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.120 we swam around there and we found floating on the 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.120 water some remnants of the boat, and one bit of 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:59.880 it was a foam bench seat from the boat, you know, 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:02.480 just like a cushion, and it was all smashed up. 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:04.560 But they were abled us, i think, sort of tear 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:06.000 it in half, and they had a bit each or 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:10.880 something and they used those to kick their way into shore. 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.440 It was miles they had to go miles, and they 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.840 were scared, and they were cold, and they were hungry. 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:22.360 It was all bad. And he said, ultimately we got 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.040 in and we were washed onto this empty beach, and 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:30.240 we were so exhausted that we both just lay on 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.560 the sand and we actually fell into this sort of 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:38.040 deep sleep. And he said we were woken by cattle 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.360 walking up to somebody's cows that was wandering up and 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.560 down the coast as they might in Tasmania. And he said, 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.600 these cows came up and were sort of rubbing their 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.240 noses on us to see what we were, to see 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.040 if they were edible, these strange black things lying on 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.920 the beach. And it was the two ab divers, and 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.760 he said that was the most astonishing adventure to s 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.920 And those are the sort of stories that these ab 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:10.000 poaches will tell you if they've been out in Bass 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.000 Strait doing this stuff for a number of years. Of course, 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:15.880 one of the most famous of them. He's a fellow 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.680 called cam Strawn, and cam Strawn briefly is probably the 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:24.080 most notorious ab poacher in the English speaking world. He, 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.400 like the late Barry Humphreys, is a graduate of Melbourne 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.760 Grammar School. He could be Melbourn Grammar School's greatest ever villain. 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.680 And his father was a spitfire pilot in World War 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.400 Two who later had a big boat that he used 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:44.520 to drive around between Victoria and Tasmania. His father used 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.280 to dive for abaloni. He was a very fearless man 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:50.400 because he'd flown spitfires in the war and didn't really 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.600 care much about the law or protocol or anything else. 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.320 And Cam young Cam learned to poach abaloney at his 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:03.920 father's knee, and Cam became an abalone poacher diver, and 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.119 he became an expert boat builder. He would build beautiful hulls, 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:13.760 these long, thin like semi racing holes that were fast 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:17.560 boats but also seaworthy, and people prize them very highly. 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.040 And among the people that prized them highly, it's the 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.720 Tasmanian water Police, because they've arrested cam Strawn so many 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.960 times that they would confiscate his boats from him, which 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.520 they can under the law, and they would equip themselves 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.960 with his boats, so that next time they chased him, 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:37.320 they would be using his boat to chase him. So 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:39.479 he would have to build one that's a bit faster 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.120 and a bit bigger motor in order to stay one 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.160 step ahead of them. And in fact, there was one 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:49.359 notorious chase across bas Strait which is known as the 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.400 Big Chase, where they had police helicopters, boats, they had 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:56.240 I think a navy boat or something, and they're all 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.400 chasing cam Strawn. And somebody said later, well, you can't 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.879 really admire him, but that is the finest feat of 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:08.280 seamanship I've ever seen him, staying ahead of us and 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.399 racing through those sort of seas in that sort of boat. 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:15.200 It's just astonishing. What's the point of telling us about 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:20.280 camp cam Strawn has brought up teens of thousands of 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:24.960 abalone over decades. He sold those four millions of dollars 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.960 on the black market. Mostly he was out deep in 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:32.119 Bastrada around little islands and things that you know, they're 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:35.560 out beyond Flinder's Island, beyond King Island and so on. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:40.119 So he wasn't denuding the Victorian shoreline per se, there 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:42.680 is that about it. However, he was breaking the law, 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:44.679 and he used to break the law a lot, and 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.880 in fact he was arrested I think ninety nine times, 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.280 and apart from having all his geared confiscated and paying 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:54.520 massive fines, he did end up going to jail. 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:55.160 He was in. 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:58.960 Jail in Victoria, at the Fulham Jail near Sale at 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.840 the same time as our old friend the late Andrew Fraser, 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:07.560 who used to call him the Captain. Cam Strawn in 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.480 jail was known as the Captain because he was the boatman. 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:15.639 Cam Strawn, without doubt was present at the death of 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.480 one of his young deckhands. This young man died of 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.560 a brain hemorrhage. Now this is probably caused by coming 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.280 up too fast from deep water, because these guys dive 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.919 with heavy stuff on, so they go down to depth 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.720 and they have these air pumps with lines all the 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:37.719 way down so they can breathe down deep and if 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.439 they're young and inexperienced, sometimes they come up too fast 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.000 and this young bloke had done this. He had a 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:47.080 brain hemorrhage and he died and cam brought him into 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.879 Port welsh Pool, which is South Gippsland, and he was 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.120 frightened that he would be pulled up by the police 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.480 and that he'd be charged with manslaughter for this young 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:00.480 fellow being dead. And he put him in the boat 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.640 on the tiler, the boats on the boat trailer, put 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.600 him on the boat and covered the boat over and 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.199 then he drove to a hospital in South Gippsland, like 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.680 curram Borough or land Gath at one of those places, 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:17.600 and produced this young bloke. And there was no hope 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:19.879 for him. Of course, he was dead on arrival. But 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:25.000 that is the sort of risk that the poaches will take. 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.679 One of the officers I've spoken to in the past 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:34.159 he had personally saved poaches who were poaching in you know, 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.200 relatively close to shore, get into trouble with the ocean 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:40.199 and waves and so on. Each swum out and saved 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.760 more than one person. The poaches had rammed a boat 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:45.520 a little bit like that Tasmanian story. 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:46.399 I just said. 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.240 A couple of them hit the Pope's Eye. I think 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:54.080 it's called out near the rip near the heads of 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.760 Port Philip Bay. They hit it at full speed and 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.600 I think it crippled one of them. It could have 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:04.160 killed them, and I think one ended up very badly hurt. 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:08.080 This is the danger those guys face. And they do 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.080 it for agreed and they do it for money. But 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.680 it also tells you that if they're willing to take 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:17.680 those risks personally, some of them are going to be 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:23.359 willing to hurt other people as well, because they won't 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:25.600 want to be caught, they won't want to be locked up, 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.080 they won't want to lose their boats or their income. 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:34.359 And so this whole black market poaching business is bad 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:39.679 for everyone because it creates a class of criminal and. 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.719 It is directly. 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:47.640 Similar to the growth of the tobacco trade. The government 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:53.520 imposes big excise taxes on tobacco products. Therefore the prices 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:56.760 go up in the legitimate market. Therefore there's a chance 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:02.679 for organized crime. So because the government intervention, tobacco prices rise, 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.880 and it creates a whole class of criminal who then 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.159 starts up these cheap tobacco shops. And then they start 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.280 standing over each other, and then they start fire bombing 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:15.560 each other, and ultimately we've got a situation where innocent 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:21.960 people are already being hurt by these fire bombings. We've 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.840 had a situation where firebombers are paid to go and 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:30.680 burn places down. And just recently this year we've had 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:34.600 a young woman burnt to death in the inner Western 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.760 suburbs for no good reason at all, only because fire 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:42.200 bombers were sent to burn down X house, they got 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.040 the wrong house and they burnt to death an innocent 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.040 young woman. This is a class of crime and of 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:53.159 criminal that the government has created through badly thought out policies. 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:57.960 And the point of that is that the government, through 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:04.159 a sin of omission, has effectively given crooks permission to 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:08.960 go out and to go out and poach abalone, all. 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:10.679 The other shellfish species that. 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.399 They can find a market for and fish because it 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:18.720 is not enough officers to police it. That is what's 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.840 going to happen, and the result will inevitably be a 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:26.239 new class of krim. They will flock to it, and 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:29.560 they already are. We've got Biki gangs involved in it. 0:23:29.880 --> 0:23:33.000 We've already got a scenario on the south coast of 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:36.760 New South Wales and we've mentioned that on this podcast before, 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.000 where there's at least a two hundred kilometers of New 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.600 South Wales coastline from just south of Sydney right down 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:51.080 towards the Victorian border. That is denuded of shellfish of abalone. Specifically, 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:55.000 there are whole reefs that are now bare because the 0:23:55.119 --> 0:23:58.800 poaches have been allowed to just pillage it and to 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:04.119 take undersigh abaloni. Abaloni needs about seven years to grow 0:24:04.480 --> 0:24:08.000 to a stage where it's big enough to reproduce. Now, 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:10.840