“Every shark taken by us lessens the chance of your being taken by a shark.”
This was the catchcry of Marine Industries Ltd who in 1929 displayed their new shark leather products at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show. The much talked about stall exhibited leather products tanned in various tints that had the quality of crocodile leather.2
Two years earlier in 1927, Marine Industries Ltd had leased the defunct Pindimar ice works for the purpose of opening a shark processing factory. The factory processed shark liver for oil and sold the shark hides, oil, flesh and fins. The last shark skinner, Mr Tom Priestly, remembered a hard life working seven days a week; skinning, finning and beaming sharks, salting then stowing their hides and boiling livers down for valuable oil. The oil was used to treat leather, temper steel and make soap.3
The firm used two boats called the Devil and Demon. The fishermen would lay several thousand feet of gill nets each night near the entrance to Port Stephens.4 In six years, over 25,000 sharks were killed.
In early 1933, the size of the boats was blamed for the small shark hauls and the factory was forced to close until such time as they could secure larger boats and build a fish-meal plant. This never eventuated and the old shark factory re-opened as a fish and oyster cannery, but fire destroyed the building in 1938. All traces of the shark killers are now gone with the long North Pindimar wharf collapsing in about 1970.5
Author: Janine Roberts
1 Janis Winn, Pioneers and history from Windy Woppa to Tahlee, NSW: 2013, 149.
2 Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 1929, 4.
3 Mike Scanlon, Newcastle Morning Herald in Janis Winn, Pioneers and history from Windy Woppa to Tahlee, NSW: 2013, 148.
4 Dungog Chronicle: Durham and Gloucester Advertiser, 15 November 1927, 6.
5 Norman Caldwell in collaboration with Norman Ellison, Fangs of the Sea in Janis Winn, Pioneers and history from Windy Woppa to Tahlee, NSW: 2013, 144-147.
6 Janis Winn, Pioneers and history from Windy Woppa to Tahlee, NSW: 2013, 152.