Back in the day, travelling Australia was funded by picking crayfish. During Summer Miss Linda would return to her roots in South Australia, visit her family for Christmas and work in the fish factories for a few months. Being good at picking the meat out of the Southern Rock Lobster shells and being paid “piece work” (a certain amount per kilo) meant you could save a heap of cash in a short time.
Miss Linda got her first job picking crayfish at Beachport at the factory, Self Nominees Pty Ltd, back in the early 80’s. The building is now “At The Jetty Cafe”.
She said, “Work was any day the boats went out. Sometimes we would work for a month straight without a day off. One of my favourite memories was sitting on the sand under the jetty in the shade with Sandra, enjoying a few cray legs on Salada biscuits for lunch”.
Miss Linda lived in the downstairs apartment of her grandparents house on the hill near the lighthouse and would drive each day in her red HT Holden to park at the back of the fish factory and start work. One day she knocked off work to find her car being returned to the car park. A couple of local surfers had “borrowed” it for the day and gone surfing around the back beach.
Everything seemed white in the fish factory, white boots, white apron, white hat, but black hair net and blue gloves. Big baskets of cooked crays called “spiders” were placed besides each girl. The picking room had two huge tables and about thirty women picking crays. Occasionally you’d get a huge cray fish which they called ‘Underarmers’ . The crays were so big you had to put them under your arm and hug them like bagpipes to be able to pull the legs off.
Miss Linda also worked at other factories in the Limestone Coast, funding her next Australian adventure by being a gun picker. Picking crayfish is something you don’t forget when you’ve had literally thousands go through your hands. Today, there are no cray picking jobs, many factories have closed and lobsters are sold as exports: live, frozen cooked/raw whole lobster and frozen raw tails.
Click below to watch our video on How to Pick Meat out of the Legs & Tail of a Southern Rock Lobster
