The Last Pearling Lugger: A Pearl Diver's Story by Mark Dodd

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Tail right corner of first twenty pages has been fold, most likely from book being dropped. Pages are sunned.

Mark Dodd arrived in Broome in 1978 as a 20-year-old looking for adventure after working his way across northern Australia. There, he fell in with the crew of the fabled DMcD, one of the last of the old wooden pearling luggers that still worked the Kimberley coast diving for pearl shells.

He came aboard as a deckhand before graduating to become one of the pearl shell divers. He dived for four seasons, living a life on the luggers and in the pubs and exotic alleys of Broome that would have been recognisable to pearl divers for 100 years before but has now sadly disappeared forever.

This story encompasses it all: the cramped camaraderie of life on a small wooden lugger, what it is like to be 40 metres down to the sea floor at the end of the precarious length of air hose, as you search for shell whilst keeping one eye out for tiger sharks.

His book is both an adventure and a wonderfully nostalgic account of an industry and a way of life that has gone forever. (back cover)