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14/11/2007: "BEAVER ...... Houdini of the sea?"
Beaver is a character from the pioneering era of the early diving.
We began as ‘divers’ when actually we were simple free diving, shallow water spear fishermen.
In those early days this was a high form of adventure easily possible with the coast and affordable to most.
In Sydney, the Port Hacking Penguins junior club members included a gang of friends.
Bob Grounds, John Barlow, Phil Eather and ‘The Beaver’ - correct name Gordon Beaver.
This wasn’t the sweet little boy as per a TV show, "Leave It To Beaver" – the Australian 'Beaver' was a wild kid who would take impossible risks, I thought.
Was he getting high on his own adrenalin? This has been known to become an addiction in others.
Whatever, the stories we were hearing on the grapevine, over the years were incredible.
As these guys entered their twenties, many turned to new opportunities available with commercial abalone diving.
Fortunes were being made by the underwater harvesting of tons of these shellfish. Price paid of about $5 per kilo in today’s adjusted values, (which is only 10% of what divers earn today).
It was an underwater gold rush. Fortunes were made fast by a hundred or so young men in the southern part of Australia and spent even faster soon afterwards in the Sydney pubs.
Chinatown restaurants were buying a small part of the catch in those days.
When the NSW abalone beds thinned out, divers like those mentioned above moved to work on international oil rigs, others to Tasmania where incidents with large white pointer sharks shattered their confidence.
Beaver struggled on with abalone diving in southern New South Wales, where the work is harder and the shellfish smaller.
At one time at Bermagui living in a caravan with an electric heater throughout winter - it was a tough life underwater as well as out of it.
Beaver became the target of fisheries inspectors in southern states. They got wind he was up to something and eventually got him for under sized lobsters on a highway stake-out as he tried to cross into Victoria to sell the catch.
The stories Beaver told me of his close shaves or near-death experiences with the sea, with broken outboards and failed equipment that had almost killed him would fill a large volume.
It was thrill seeking stuff, to the extreme.
Regrettably, no one has fully documented these amazing adventures.
In 1981, I found Beaver living once in a bay side house close to the oil refinery at Botany Bay or Kurnell.
His XC Falcon had broken down the night before.
By the time we returned the next morning the rear window was smashed. Soon after the car was stripped. Tough neighborhood.
Beaver’s adventure seeking once diverted to drinking wine with homeless people in the park.
For strange thrills he set fire to a small pile of cash banknotes (some $750 which would be $2000 today).
With the money in flames he the fought off the destitute group with a stick as they tried to save the burning cash.
Why? I asked at the time. “For the thrill of experiencing their reactions” replied the Beaver.
I can appreciate what he was doing. A bit of a waste though.
(A nameless person once paid, at auction, a similar sum for a TV model’s chamois bikini. It was later stolen. Any sillier a stunt for cheap thrills)?
Beaver was a promising writer in his early days. A pity he didn't continue with it.
Maybe he failed to impress Jack Evans the skindiving magazine editor. As a teenager Beaver used 13 teaspoons of sugar in his cup of tea at Jack's house before being told to stop.
The last I heard of Beaver was at Bonnie Hills, NSW a few years ago.
He ran a professional fishing boat and the motor had just blown up.
Then Beaver, in typical escape from trouble mode won about $75,000 on a poker machine jackpot. This got him out of trouble, again.
There is no other ‘diver’ I’ve heard of who could fill a book with such a variety of unusual stories most with some connection to diving.
Beaver is always great entertainment value.
