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25/08/2006: "TANYA BINNING ........ Wally Gibbins story begins"

Tanya appeared in surf films, a Ron Taylor documentary and a feature film directed by the famed Roman Polanski.

Tanya’s mother was Elsie Binning who worked at the Steyne Hotel, Manly (a Sydney Harbor suburb) where Wally Gibbins was a patron, which gives us the excuse to show these wonderful pictures of Tanya when she was a surf girl pin-up.

Elsie often spoke of the exploits of her friend (Wally Gibbins), of the lobsters he’d bring to her and his mates at the pub and the big jewfish speared.

I was often on the phone to Tanya who lived at Harbord, while I was near the city at Glebe, and sometimes I’d have a chat to Elsie and she’d clue me up with Wally’s most recent adventures.

(Years later I moved to Harbord and Tanya moved to Glebe)!

I first met Wally a few years before, at Jack’s Milk Bar (Annandale) where he was repairing the pin ball machine we teenage kids played and tampered with. Maybe we’d broken or jammed it while trying to trick it into a free game?

His stories of fish and sharks that day were, to untrained ears, just unbelievable. We wanted to believe but were not convinced without proof.

It was good inspiration, a few weeks later I bought a spear gun and jumped in the sea at Long Reef with a few of these Annandale friends for back-up - none were to keep their interest in spear fishing going beyond that first summer.

One factor may have been sparked at the dive club we attended where members freely talked about making regular donations of blood at the blood bank?

A strange subliminal form of insurance policy in the days when highly regular (highly publicized) shark bites (or attacks as they were called then) were still happening.

Consequently spear fishermen were thought to be the maddest people on earth then. Some really were, and that will be another story.