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20/02/2006: "LEGENDARY DIVE BOAT .......Riversong"
The first known fishing boat prepared to take spear fishing groups on regular trips.
Wally Muller and Riversong were based at Yeppoon, Queensland – a fishing village situated almost on the Tropic of Capricorn.
Offshore are the Keppel Islands including The Man and Wife, Barren Island and Egg Rock. All top locations for big fish, fast dangerous sharks and occasional (highly venomous) sea snakes. Water visibility averages 10 to 20 meters.
Further east and stretching to the south are the Capricorn and Bunker reefs and islands – which includes the tourist resort of Heron Island. Visibility there is better but 30 meter days have become increasingly rare.
To the east is the most extensive southern region of Great Barrier Reefs called The Swain Reefs. Visibility up to 20 meters is common. Many small reefs forming a maze.
This was the territory that fisherman Wally Muller worked with Riversong, in the era when no charts or maps existed, 1940’s to about 1967.
Gulf Oil (USA) photographed the region with DC-3 aircraft and obtained the first charts.
Wally Muller with Riversong was hired to help them. The money Wal earned helped get him out of professional fishing and into the charter boat business with a new larger boat, Careelah and later Coralita.
Before this could happen, Riversong was an occasional spear fisherman’s mothership taking pioneer divers into The Swains and on one occasion a real adventure to Saumarez Reef in the southern The Coral Sea. There underwater vision is mostly 50 meters or better. A perilous journey in a small vessel.
On the Swain Reefs Wally hand lined for reef fish. Coral trout being the prize catch. His 4000 pound capacity freezer might take himself and his deckhand three weeks to fill with fish fillets.
Five spear fishermen achieved the same result in just 10 days in the Capricorn and Bunker Group, 1964 when coral trout were plentiful in shallow waters. "Difficult to believe today when seeing a single coral trout has become a rarity" says Ron and Valerie Taylor who dived the region two months ago.
Use SEARCH for specifications on the boat and more about Wally. The above picture is from Ron Taylor’s collection, taken in the early 1960's. Wally filleting fish on the rear deck. he later became a good spearman - ususual at the time for any fisherman to take-up diving.
