A Fisherman's Tale - Harry Mouchemore

The 84 year old retired Queenscliff fisherman gave up his craft about ten years ago and is now the last of his breed living on Fisherman’s flat in the pretty coastal town of Queenscliff, Victoria, Australia.

Once up to 50 couta boats would head off in the dark from Queenscliff in search of the Barracouta.

Many lived in the rows of tiny harbourside cottages known as the fisherman’s flat. Harry’s cottage is so close to the water, he can watch the boats from his back porch.

The world is a different place now. Fisherman’s Flat is prime real estate and few people eat the barracouta anymore.

“The rest have died off or moved on” Harry says. But there are a new generation of people like Andrew Scorgie, a Queenscliff Couta boat owner with a love of the town’s fishing past and a desire to keep the stories alive.

Harry was just 18 years old when he brought Jessie, his first Couta boat which he named after his first girl friend. He used to call all his boats after women. “ I had six boats and so ran out of women,” the happily married great-grandfather says with a laugh. His last boat, Pepe, got its name from his pet Chihuahua.

Harry says a fisherman’s life is like that of a landowner. It gets into your bones. He was born into a fishing family and grew up on Fisherman’s Flat, where his father was born.

He remembers his first day at school and the day three schoolboys drowned when they took out a boat on Swan Bay. The junior school stood on the street opposite the Royal Hotel as the hearses passed by, he says.

Harry had a close few close calls of his own on the water, once almost colliding with a steamer. “But you don’t take to much notice”.

He knows the coast like the back of his hand and used to count the pine trees on the foreshore for landmarks. Back then, there were unions and quotas and no such thing as GPS. When he moved into Cray fishing, Harry dangled a lead smeared with grease overboard to check if the bottom was sandy or rock.

And it was hard work; Harry reckons his hands started bleeding pulling in Couta lines after World War 2 where he served with his brother Patty. “My hands had softened up during service,” he says.

Words don’t do justice to the feeling in Harry’s voice when asked if he would love to still be out on the water. “Oh yeah,” he says, with a yearning heard from his heart. “The Couta were good to me. They built me my first boat and built my house. I’ve never had a loan.”

His friend Lewis Ferrier, the bare foot fisherman aged almost 80, recently left Fisherman’s Flat to live in Point Lonsdale but is still fishing. Harry says the barracouta disappeared from the bay for about 12 years, but Lewis is starting to catch a few again.

As for Harry, he spends a lot of his time now wandering up the street to the Queenscliff Maritime Museum. You’ll find him there most days, talking to people from all around the world and answering their questions. He is like a walking history lesson because, as he say’s, the past is important.

Harry recalls the day that Prime Minister Harold Holt went missising.

Harry Mouchemore had just finished fishing when he was flown in to search for Harold Holt almost 40 years ago.

Next year will mark 40 years since the Queenscliff fisher¬man used his knowledge of tides and currents to search for the missing Prime Minister, who disappeared while swim¬ming at Portsea’s Cheviot Beach on December 17,1967.

The retired fisherman recalled how he had knocked off for the day when defence top brass whisked him from the fisherman’s co-op to the com¬mand centre at Portsea.

"They arranged to pick me up from the football ground in a chopper," Mr Mouchemore said.” They had a tent pitched on the hill where they had cap¬tains and commanders and Navy divers and they had charts laid down out on tables."

"It was the day after and they hadn't found anything at that stage."

Mr Mouchmore used his lo¬cal knowledge to point divers where he thought the tides would take Holt. "There's an eddy created there, and because of the tide he could have been swept out to Point Nepean.

"They dived where I thought but it didn't work out that way." Mr Mouchemore said the "sou-westerly", rocks, bull kelp and flood tide would have made snorkelling difficult for the skindiving politician.

The old salt laughed at con¬spiracy theories suggesting Holt was a Chinese spy who
Swam to a submarine, instead offering a more natural if grisly, fate for the Prime Minister.
"The sea lice are very bad down there, we put out bait in the tray pots and the sea lice .. all you got back were bones, it could have been that way couldn't it?"

When the defence chiefs re¬turned Mr Mouchemore to Queenscliff by helicopter, the fisherman was a minor hero.

"I thought, well it's all in a days work isn't it? There's a bit of glory in it isn't there?"
Now, with 60 years of fishing under his belt, the 86 year old hinted at a return to the seas.
“I retired 10 years ago, I am getting bored”.

Yes it’s has been a year of milestones for Harry.

It's been a year of milestones for Harry Mouchemore. Not only has he just celebrated his 86t'' birthday, he was also finally presented with a white rib knit woollen jumper a much-prized trophy among our original couta fishing fraternity.

The sweater harks back to a century-old local tradition, whereby the first couta fisherman to make it back with his catch was bestowed with the honour of wearing the white jumper.

Harry, who only retired from couta fishing ten years ago, never got to wear the jumper himself despite winning his fair share of 'first homes.' But he fondly remembers his father reminiscing about the "bit of glory" the prize provided for those lucky enough to score it.

The gift was presented by the Queenscliffe Couta Boat Association, in recognition of his role in enhancing the town's maritime history. At the same time, the organisation handed over a cheque to his good mate Lewis Ferrier to assist in the upkeep of his boat 'Rosebud.'

The pair are the only surviving original couta fishermen still living on Fisherman's Flat.