Hunter River fishermen have scorned a funding package included in this week’s federal budget designed to help them rebuild their lives if local waterways remain closed due to the Williamtown RAAF base contamination scandal.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Should the state government decide to extend a fishing ban on Fullerton Cove and Upper Tilligerry Creek beyond June, affected businesses will become eligible for a one-off Business Transition Payment of $25,000 to help them relocate or transition to a new line of work.
However President of the Wild Caught Fishers Coalition Kevin Radnidge has begun to explore relocation options and said the payment would not even scratch the surface of what was required.
“You put some figures together and it frightens you,” he said.
“I looked at possibly going to the Hawkesbury River and working down there. But people wouldn’t sell me a licence without buying the boat. One fella wanted $150,000 and the other wanted over $100,000,” he said.
He said the cost of buying an endorsement which would allow him to have 10 crab traps had been put in excess of $30,000.
“I don’t know where the government get their figures. It’s pie in the sky stuff,” he said.
Mr Radnidge said eight months of living off the equivalent of unemployment benefits had left many fishers “financially and mentally broken”.
John Luke has been working the river for 45 years and prides himself on being the only Indigenous estuary prawn trawler in NSW.
“For 25 grand I’ll tear my whole life up? It’s a bloody insult,” he said.
He said even if waterways were reopened, the fisher’s brand had been destroyed.
“Are you going to buy prawns if I say it’s only got a little bit of poison in it? How long is it going to take to get rid of the stigma? We’re in big trouble,” he said.
He said he was saddened by the loss of the Hunter River which had been a major source of food for Aboriginal people for 40,000 years.
“200 years of white occupation and they’ve killed the river. That’s the most awful thing,” he said.
Member for Paterson Bob Baldwin admitted the package was “not enough” for fishermen but said only three people had contacted his office to express their concerns.
“I’m not a mind reader. If people have an issue they have to come forward,” he said.
Mr Baldwin said there was scope for additional compensation to be directed to the fishermen from the $2.2 million dollars allocated in the budget for the crisis but that would be decided by the incoming government based on recommendations from the NSW Department of Primary Industries.
Fisherman David Woodward, 62, said his home in the contamination red zone at Fullerton Cove was beginning to “disintegrate” under the pressure of living without a proper income.
“If I was working, I would fix the fly screens which are falling apart. I wouldn’t have a leaking roof and my electricity bill would be paid,” he said.
He said it cost him $120,000 three years ago to build his boat, spending which ate into his “old girl’s” retirement funds.
“We know every inch of this river. You can’t relocate us. There’s only the Hawkesbury, Clarence and Hunter Rivers, and even then you would have to find another fisherman who wants to sell up their boat and their business,” he said.
The men joke that they now spend their days sitting under a “worry tree” by the pier at Stockton where their boats sit idle.
“Some of the guys are suffering depression,” Mr Luke said.
“But we’ve got to laugh because we’ve all had our cry.”
Veteran prawn fisherman Geoff Hyde spent Wednesday repainting the yellow and purple trawler that he designed and built specifically for the shallow waters of Fullerton Cove.
The 79-year-old has now come to believe he will never be able to take “Hod” up the river to Fullerton Cove again.
“It’s closed now and it has been for nearly 12 months and it will never open again by the look of it. Which is bloomin’ awful,” he said.