Gone fishing

When Linda Peatling went to Tasmania in search of the legendary ‘octopus lady of Eaglehawk Neck’, she didn’t quite know what to expect – it certainly wasn’t a petite blonde mother of four otherwise known as Rosalie Schwerteger.

Silently she wades through the dark waters of Eaglehawk Neck, her steely blade glistening in the moonlight as she searches for the eight long tentacles that will reveal her prey… From a distance, it wouldn’t be too hard to write Rosalie Schwerteger into the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

She’s already known to Tasmanians as the ‘octopus lady of Eaglehawk Neck’, her home is surrounded by places including Pirate’s Bay and Devil’s Kitchen, and she does spend most nights lurking in water for the purpose of cutting off the heads of unsuspecting octopods. But take a closer look and you soon realise Rosalie is not quite the bloodthirsty creature that her title implies. In fact, she’s just a down-to-earth mother of four who has managed to make it in the male-dominated fishing world through her own foresight, determination and inherent love of the sea.

3am: Days begin early for the fishermen and fisherwomen of the tiny bay known as Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula and, like generations before her, Rosalie goes out each night, be it rain, hail or shine, to make her living. “I’ve been out there with snow falling on my head, wind burning my eyes or rain pouring on me. But I live my life by the tides, so I have to get out of bed in the wee hours of the morning whether I like it or not,” says Rosalie, who comes from a long line of fishermen but is the first woman in the family to take up the trade.

“When I was a little girl I’d go out to sea on Dad’s fishing boat and I loved it. I never thought I’d actually be doing it for a living; women just didn’t do that sort of thing in those days,” she recalls.

Rosalie moved from Tasmania to Brisbane when she left school and entered the fashion world as a window dresser for a women’s fashion retailer. But as the years went by, she felt more and more compelled to return to the icy waters of her home town. “It was just too humid for me up there so when I turned 30 I came back with my husband Felix and my two eldest sons, Michael and Jeremy. Felix was contracted to build the local timber mill and I’d spend my days with the boys on Dad’s boat and loving it,” she recalls. “Then one day while I was watching him I just thought, ‘I could do that’, so I started sneaking out in his boat at night to see what I could catch. He’d always tell us the fish were finished after dusk, but I was bringing in loads of them in the middle of the night and the trucks would collect them at dawn. Dad was none the wiser because I’d have the boat back before he got out of bed.”

Eventually, Rosalie confessed her nightly escapades to her father and to her surprise, he welcomed her to the fishing world almost with open arms. “I think he was slightly miffed that I’d shown him up by catching the fish he’d said were finished for the night, but I think he was happy that I was following in his footsteps,” says Rosalie.

3.30am: As the other fishermen head out to the open sea in their large fishing boats, Rosalie simply dons her waterproof overalls and wades into the shallow waters of the little bay across the road from her house to carry out a different kind of fishing than the one she was brought up on. “Octopuses are washed into the bay by the tide each night and they end up stranded on the sand when the tide washes out,” explains Rosalie. “That’s a slow, horrible way to die, but if I get to them first, at least they go in a very fast, humane way,” she says solemnly as she grabs the night’s first 6kg octopus and quickly slices off its head with her 10cm knife. “I make sure they die instantly because I’d hate to see them suffer.”

It was more than 30 years ago when a 32-year-old Rosalie caught her first octopus and she admits to being a lot more squeamish about the whole thing then than she is now. “I was used to handling fish but octopuses are slimy and their tentacles seem to climb all over you. I just shuddered and dropped the first one I picked up,” she laughs. “And there was no way I could cut off its head, so I got a local schoolboy to do it for me.”

While the girl in Rosalie remained hesitant for some time, the fisherwoman in her knew she would have to get over her repulsion, because she sensed that she had stumbled upon a new and lucrative market in the stranded octopods. “They’d been dying this way for decades and nobody had ever taken much notice of them, but I knew there was a growing Greek population in Melbourne and I knew they liked to eat octopus, so I thought I’d give it a go,” explains Rosalie. “My dad thought I was mad; I remember him laughing his head off and saying, ‘Who’d want to eat an octopus?’”

Needless to say, Rosalie’s instincts were right and within a few months she had a contract with seafood company Safcol and was also selling $1,000 worth of octopus a week to Melbourne restaurants. “People around here couldn’t believe it, but nobody was laughing at me then,” she smiles.

5am: As dawn breaks and the tide begins to turn, Rosalie collects her last octopus for the night and meets her second son, Jeremy, 30, and youngest son, Julian, 23, at the boat ramp where they’ll load up to 100kg of octopus tentacles into Rosalie’s fishing boat before heading back to their processing plant to freeze them. “Sometimes the boys will help me hunt octopuses, but I like to do it alone because it’s relaxing,” says Rosalie. “I’m allowed to collect up to 100kg a night but I might only catch four on a bad night and 20 to 30 on a good night. The numbers are depleting, but I think it has more to do with the environment than over-fishing. I only catch the few that are washed into the bay, and if I see an octopus laying eggs, I don’t touch her.”

7am: Rosalie enjoys a well-earned shower followed by a hot breakfast and an even hotter cup of tea before going back to bed for a few hours. “I’ve never needed a lot of sleep, which I suppose is good if you’re a fisherwoman with four sons,” she laughs. “The boys are all grown up now, but when they were at school my life was a bit of a blur. I’d be out fishing all night then I’d race home to wake them up, make breakfast, get them off to school, spend the morning processing, have a couple of hours sleep, pick them up from school and head out in the evening to go fishing again.” Luckily for Rosalie, Felix was not a fisherman and could take care of the boys during the night while she was working. “I’m not sure how we had four children, because we rarely saw each other after dark,” laughs Rosalie.

Rosalie admits that her dedication to fishing has been unwavering even at the most inopportune times. “I was pregnant with my third son, Morgan, and one night I was out in my nice dry waders, up to my waist, when my waters broke and I went into labour,” she laughs. “I suppose I just love what I do and it hasn’t hurt the boys in any way; they used to call themselves the ‘pirates of Eaglehawk Neck’ and they’d spend hours out on their little rafts having adventures. I think they liked having a mum who’d take them fishing, because Felix would go green just looking at a boat!”

10am: Sufficiently rested, Rosalie gets ready to enjoy her second love. “Antiques are a passion of mine and I like to dress up like a girl every now and then and go to an antique fair or auction with a couple of friends,” she smiles. “You have to be tough to work in the fishing industry but you don’t have to be butch. I like surrounding myself with beautiful things, and I also like wearing high heels and skirts just as much as I like wearing my old wading overalls.”

2pm: Back from her antique treasure hunt, Rosalie analyses the pieces she’s discovered today before joining Julian and Jeremy in the processing plant where they’ll cut, cook, smoke or pickle the octopus before it’s shipped around the country. “I’ve had to slow down a bit in the past couple of years because I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, so Julian has taken over the business,” explains Rosalie. “Jeremy is a chef and together they’ve come up with some amazing new flavours, which seem to be taking off.”

3pm: Rosalie leaves the boys to it and takes some time out to relax in her garden in the afternoon sun. “This is like a little sanctuary where I can think about things other than fishing and just de-stress,” says Rosalie, who has had more than her fair share of stress in the past couple of years. “Just before I was diagnosed with cancer, I lost Felix to a heart attack, then one of my sisters died, my other sister had a stroke and my sister-in-law died – all within a matter of months. It’s been very hard, but you just have to keep going.”

4pm: As the evening approaches, Rosalie heads back to the water’s edge to tend to the more traditional part of her fishing business. “At dusk I fish for mackerel, so I’m forever checking and repairing nets, but it can be very relaxing work. It’s the kind of thing you could do over a few laughs with friends, but none of my girlfriends are fisherwomen like me,” she smiles.

5pm: With her nets intact, Rosalie takes a quick trip to the local jetty to chat with some of the fishermen who have become her friends over the years. “The guys have always been great towards me and if they ever see me with a heavy load in my nets, they give me a hand to bring them in,” she smiles. “I’ve only had trouble with one fellow who’s tried to squeeze me out and he’s been pretty brutal about it at times, but I’ve been doing this a lot longer than him and all the other fishermen know me, so I’m not afraid.”

 

Photography: Scott Hawkins. Hair: Angela Rouleston. Make-up: Jessica Catalano.