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I had always kept scrap books and collected everything and anything that involved fishing and

Kalk Bay. When plans to “upgrade” Kalk Bay were announced in 1990 I became deeply
involved along with many of the fishermen, and spent hours at meetings and workshops. We

went through all the original proposals of building on the Point and upgrading the harbour

area and establishing a yacht club. At the end of all the debates and discussions, which went
on for weeks, most of the fishermen believed the “revised plans” had been accepted. We

thought all the major problems and threats to the fishing industry and harbour had been sorted
out and our future secured. Then plans for the harbour expansion and Japanese aid were

announced. This was followed by debates over fish factories, and then it appeared that

another company had been given the go-ahead to draw up plans to develop the Point, and then
more recently it was announced that they had withdrawn.

I decided it was time to put pen to paper and record the history of the fishing industry as best
as possible, so that people will know what they are dealing with when they put forward all the

schemes and ideas, and that people will know what has already been said and what promises

have been made.

How we went about it

Through the formation of this Historical Association I met up with Iain and we decided to

work together. Both of us had our own collection of material and we began by listing all the

events that had taken place over the years, all the names of people and of boats etc. It was a
shambles to begin with but because we both have difficulty reading any book that keeps

jumping in time, one minute in 1980 then suddenly back in 1790, we decided to begin at the

beginning and work in chronological order through the years. We had no idea of how to tell
the story and tried not to steer it in any particular direction. As it unfolded we soon realised

that the facts would tell the story by themselves.

We then spent days in the archives, in the reference libraries, reading and recording bits of

information and seeking out interesting pictures. We also visited people with a tape recorder,
following up all the leads we could. Most people were extremely helpful, as you will note in