The first Europeans to commercially fish for abalone in Tasmania were a group of Irish shark fishermen at Southport. When the Jesuit priest Father Julian Tennison-Woods visited Southport and he found ten families fishing for shark there and in Recerche Bay. They boiled down the livers for oil, sold the fins and used the flesh for fertilizer on their cabbage fields. When the weather was too rough to catch shark they speared abalone. The fins and the abalone were boiled and then dried by Wham Sing and his brother Teck at Southport and shipped to Hobart for export to the goldfields. According to Tenison-Woods the Sydney merchant Chin Ateak was prepared to pay 9d a pound in 1880 for any quantity of the shellfish that was ‘much esteemed by the Chinese’. The priest found that although abalone were abundant ‘it was too troublesome a fishery to make it a pursuit, except when nothing else could be caught.’
The Tasmanian Abalone Fishery: A Personal History
MARRIAGES: Wham Sing & Eliza Palmer, Franklin district 1864 RGD37/1/23 p62
An act of charity, deserving of record, has just been performed by some splitters from Southport, who arrived in town early yesterday morning. It appears that a man named John Fisher, and his daughter Mary Fisher, 16 years of age had for some days been suffering from severe illness and were unable to procure medical attendance, they being in extremely destitute circumstances, and there being no doctor resident nearer to their place of abode than Three Hut Point. Under these circumstances the men referred to, whose names are Edward Isaacson, James Warren, John Burgess, Henry Silvester, and George Asher, obtained the use of a whaleboat belonging to James Sing, a native of China, living at Southport, and volunteered to bring the invalids to town, free of charge. They accordingly started on their mission of mercy at about 3 p. m. on Thurs-day, but whilst on the voyage hither the girl died. As soon as the boat reached town the body was conveyed to the hospital dead-house by the police, and the girl’s father was also removed to the institution, where he still lies under treatment.
The Mercury, 10 April 1869
DEATH: Avis Aella Sing, Esperance district 1871 RGD 35/1/40 p63
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