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06/02/2007: "TREASURE (1980 BOOK) ........ by diver Allan Robinson"

The Allan Robinson book is apparently still popular today with young hopeful, wreck divers.

With a small print run, copies are rare and valuable. Treasure in paper form.

Published 1980 by the author it details his Western Australia shipwreck discoveries and subsequent battles with bureaucracy at a time when few if any laws existed covering shipwrecks.

His problems were to escalate and end with his own death just three years later.

While awaiting a court verdict on a very serious (and possibly false) charge in 1983 he was found hanged in jail.

Murdered or suicide? Either happens easily in a cell.

A not guilty verdict was delivered a short time later.

I never met Allan Robinson but several friends had.

All spoke well of him, except those employed by government departments who hated him, it seems.

His life and the troubles he was to cause for himself warrants a movie. Adventure, discovery, personal tragedies and even his own death while in custody.

A modern day (marine) Ned Kelly who took on the authorities?

Western Australia is a tough frontier. It’s almost like another country separated from the east coast by a desert.

Robinson had tried to stay within maritime shipwreck law, a bit difficult with retrospective laws. His response to these became his own downfall. He should and could have just copped it sweet, but bucked the system instead. It doesn't work.


After completing this book, which I found more exhausting to write than a series of dives on the Zuytdorp I went on a world trip with Lyn….back in Perth I decided to return to Karratha, the boom town of the north west……illogically I built a home close to a local policeman….. every attempt I made to be friendly was met with a blank stare or broad back.

One day I confronted the policeman over the fence “Please, can you tell me what is wrong, you treat me like I have an infectious disease”.

“It’s nothing personal but we have been instructed not to associate with you. I am not permitted to speak to you. I’m sorry”.

The gangland type of beat-up I’d received from the police was the peak of a long harassment which obviously continues in lower key to this day…….the activities of the Western Australian police force in their relentless pursuit of (me) one man. by Allan Robinson