Cray Tales

Description

*Outsiders say of the luxury lobster industry, “extraordinary wealth, drugs and nothing to do but fish and fight.” Well yes, but there’s more, much more when you look and that is what Cray Tales reveals.* Cray Tales gives a largely unrecorded West Australian sub-culture the opportunity to be seen and heard. The fishermen and their families’ tales are bawdy, tragic, tender and whether the reader likes history, surfing, drama or a good belly laugh there is something for everyone. It’s about exclusive lobster fishers whose livelihoods are bound into the ecology of the sea and who take the dangerous, isolated and bizarre for granted. They’re driven by a hunting instinct, technology shunts, money sculpts but nature prevails and the resulting human condition is unique, pioneering, skilled and naive. Cray Tales, published in 1998, is a book offering a colourful account of the Western Australian Cray Fishing Industry Never before has the Australian cray fishing industry been recorded in such colourful, vibrant detail. A 160 page book by Perth writer Annie de Monchaux, captures the lives and loves of the men and women who depend on the red crustacean for their living, was first published in 1998. Cray Tales is an assortment of stories told by the fishermen and women themselves interspersed with quality photographs taken by Trigg Craig, Tim Grant, Graham Miller and Annie. It is a unique collection of truly Australian yarns. It also contains a smattering of seafood recipes, interesting tidbits about the industry from boat building to processing and remarkable accounts of human endurance. Writer Annie de Monchaux has carefully preserved the essence of each man and woman’s story in her editing of the tape recorded interviews. Nothing is off limits and what is captured in text and image is the raw, magic appeal of the sea, its challenges and the people who pursue cray fishing as a job and way of life. **Annie lashes her raft of tales together with her colourful observations and humorous insights. Cray Tales is a provocative peek into a way of life the rest of us can only imagine. There is something in it for everyone.**

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