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.

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.

THE CREW

Writer Annie de Monchaux, wife and mother of three, traveled 400 kilometres along the coast and around the Abrolhos islands, in and out of pubs and shacks and homes armed with a tape recorder, collecting stories and mixing them like an alchemist.  She went fishing day after day and even ventured out into the treacherous waters of Big Bank, some 80 kms off the coast where the boat doesn’t return until its fully-laden with crays.  Although she wasn’t seasick she did fall overboard once.

This book would not exist but for the generosity of the people who gave their written authority to use recorded interviews from which these tales were extracted. Cray Tales is interspersed with quality photographs taken by Trigg Craig, Tim Grant, Graham Miller and writer Annie. Designer, Belinda Edwards, took all the words and images and then proceeded to work miracles with them, creating the first two editions of the book.

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