Triton
06-11-2008, 07:05:PM
Hey guys,
I bought this book yesterday and its a great read.
If anyone is interested in Chris' book and how whaling was stopped in Australia then i highly recommend it. Im really enjoying it.
The Last Whale by Chris Pash discusses whaling history
Article from: AAP By Warwick Stanley November 05, 2008 11:30am
NOVEMBER 21 marks the 30th anniversary of the closure of the Albany-based Cheynes Beach Whaling Company and the last Australian whale hunt.
In The Last Whale, author Chris Pash covers the events leading up to to the day that marked the success of Greenpeace's first campaign in Australia and the end of whaling in English-speaking countries.
When the first Save the Whale campaign was launched in the 1970s, most Australians did not know their country was still whaling.
And such was the isolation of Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia, the last whaling station in the English-speaking world appeared impervious to the growing rejection of an industry whose battles between men and monsters of the deep had once captured the imagination of seafarers and adventurers.
That changed in 1977 when a group of Australians brought an international team of activists to Albany with Zodiac inflatable boats to use themselves as human shields to protect the sperm whales against harpoons.
A Frenchman was the key link in that campaign.
``The Phantom'', aka Jean Paul Fortom-Gouin, was a small 35-year-old with natty suits and deep pockets who once claimed to have made his money from real estate deals in Panama but otherwise kept mum on the source of his wealth.
Fortom-Gouin wanted to speak to whales and dolphins and in 1977 bought Santini's Porpoise School in Florida, famous as the home of the 1960s cetacean TV star, Flipper.
He closed the centre to the public and transformed it into the Institute for Delphinid Research, made himself the director and created a program aimed at understanding the language of whales and dolphins.
In the same year, Fortom-Gouin persuaded the Panamanian government to appoint him as their official representative on the International Whaling Commission.
It was also the first year that Australia had hosted the meeting of the world's whaling ``club'', following the haranguing of delegates at the commission's previous annual meeting in the UK.
The anti-whaling lobby suspected the meeting had been shifted to a ``backwater'' to avoid such unpleasantness.
``On the first day of the IWC meeting in Australia, Fortom-Gouin appeared among the representatives of whaling nations carrying a life-sized sculpture of a whale's brain above his head,'' writes Chris Pash, author of the The Last Whale, a new book published on the 30th anniversary of Australia's last whale hunts.
``An activist in a business suit, he dazzled the anti-whaling movement and annoyed the world club that was the International Whaling Commission.''
Fortom-Gouin enlisted Johnny Lewis, a photographer and anti-whaling activist who was the son of former NSW Premier Tom Lewis, in his bid to shut down the whaling industry.
``The Frenchman reminded Jonny of The Phantom, a mysterious comic book hero who appeared out of nowhere to fight evil,'' writes Pash.
``Jonny cut out a famous Phantom image where the crime fighter stands riding two dolphins and presented it to Jean-Paul in an impressive frame.
``Jean-Paul spoke privately to Jonny. 'How would you like to work for The Phantom?' '''What have you in mind?'
``Jean-Paul smiled. 'We're going to close Australia's whaling station'.''
Fortom-Gouin explained how they would bring in Greenpeace ``for an international feel'', start an Australian branch of the campaign and launch ``a Greenpeace-type operation on Cheynes (whaling company)''.
Project Jonah, an American offshoot of the community-based Friends of the Earth that had its origins in the anti-nuclear movement, had been lobbying against whaling in Australia since 1973.
Its pragmatic, non-partisan approach to the issue made it the ideal lobbying machine to complement the strategies of the anti-whaling warriors who were about to descend on Albany.
As an Australian entity, Project Jonah made its first big splash when it launched a 12-metre whale on Canberra's Lake Burley-Griffin during the 1977 IWC meeting.
``Willie'', as he was known, later joined singing and dancing demonstrators on the grass outside Canberra's Lakeside Hotel, where the meeting was being held, and whaling suddenly emerged as a possible election issue.
But the anti-whaling movement knew that closing down the whaling station in Albany was no fait accompli.
Western Australia was an extremely conservative state and conservationists were widely seen as interlopers trying to do locals out of their jobs.
The Last Whale opens the curtain on a dangerous game of hostilities in which the hunters were hunted.
Whaling boat crewmen were tough souls, the town and their families depended on the success of their hunt, and the handful of activists who infiltrated their world were treated like a real and present danger.
Pash, who was a cadet reporter for the Albany Advertiser during the tension-filled months of the local anti-whaling campaign, takes us on thrilling rides aboard the whaling boats, fearful adventures on the Zodiacs that trailed the whalers, and gives us entertaining insights into the confrontations between the warring parties.
It's a dispassionate account that peers into the lives of both the whalers and the protesters in the lead-up to the anti-climactic last whale hunt on November 21, 1978.
It also provides a brief run-down on where they all are and what they're doing, 30 years on.
The book has received plaudits from best-selling West Australian novelist Tim Winton, who describes it as ``a timely reminder of how far we've come since the days of routine slaughter, of how hard conservationists fought to bring it to an end ...''
Pash, a news and information company executive now living in Sydney, says he has spent much of the past 30 years researching the time he spent ``floating around the edges as an observer''.
He has done his best to sort ``fact from myth'', he says, and the result is an eminently readable account of the fear and loathing on Australia's last whaling frontier.
On November 21, Pash will attend a reunion of whalers at the Cheynes whaling station, now a museum called Whale World.
The Last Whale, by Chris Pash. Fremantle Press. RR: $29.95.
I bought this book yesterday and its a great read.
If anyone is interested in Chris' book and how whaling was stopped in Australia then i highly recommend it. Im really enjoying it.
The Last Whale by Chris Pash discusses whaling history
Article from: AAP By Warwick Stanley November 05, 2008 11:30am
NOVEMBER 21 marks the 30th anniversary of the closure of the Albany-based Cheynes Beach Whaling Company and the last Australian whale hunt.
In The Last Whale, author Chris Pash covers the events leading up to to the day that marked the success of Greenpeace's first campaign in Australia and the end of whaling in English-speaking countries.
When the first Save the Whale campaign was launched in the 1970s, most Australians did not know their country was still whaling.
And such was the isolation of Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia, the last whaling station in the English-speaking world appeared impervious to the growing rejection of an industry whose battles between men and monsters of the deep had once captured the imagination of seafarers and adventurers.
That changed in 1977 when a group of Australians brought an international team of activists to Albany with Zodiac inflatable boats to use themselves as human shields to protect the sperm whales against harpoons.
A Frenchman was the key link in that campaign.
``The Phantom'', aka Jean Paul Fortom-Gouin, was a small 35-year-old with natty suits and deep pockets who once claimed to have made his money from real estate deals in Panama but otherwise kept mum on the source of his wealth.
Fortom-Gouin wanted to speak to whales and dolphins and in 1977 bought Santini's Porpoise School in Florida, famous as the home of the 1960s cetacean TV star, Flipper.
He closed the centre to the public and transformed it into the Institute for Delphinid Research, made himself the director and created a program aimed at understanding the language of whales and dolphins.
In the same year, Fortom-Gouin persuaded the Panamanian government to appoint him as their official representative on the International Whaling Commission.
It was also the first year that Australia had hosted the meeting of the world's whaling ``club'', following the haranguing of delegates at the commission's previous annual meeting in the UK.
The anti-whaling lobby suspected the meeting had been shifted to a ``backwater'' to avoid such unpleasantness.
``On the first day of the IWC meeting in Australia, Fortom-Gouin appeared among the representatives of whaling nations carrying a life-sized sculpture of a whale's brain above his head,'' writes Chris Pash, author of the The Last Whale, a new book published on the 30th anniversary of Australia's last whale hunts.
``An activist in a business suit, he dazzled the anti-whaling movement and annoyed the world club that was the International Whaling Commission.''
Fortom-Gouin enlisted Johnny Lewis, a photographer and anti-whaling activist who was the son of former NSW Premier Tom Lewis, in his bid to shut down the whaling industry.
``The Frenchman reminded Jonny of The Phantom, a mysterious comic book hero who appeared out of nowhere to fight evil,'' writes Pash.
``Jonny cut out a famous Phantom image where the crime fighter stands riding two dolphins and presented it to Jean-Paul in an impressive frame.
``Jean-Paul spoke privately to Jonny. 'How would you like to work for The Phantom?' '''What have you in mind?'
``Jean-Paul smiled. 'We're going to close Australia's whaling station'.''
Fortom-Gouin explained how they would bring in Greenpeace ``for an international feel'', start an Australian branch of the campaign and launch ``a Greenpeace-type operation on Cheynes (whaling company)''.
Project Jonah, an American offshoot of the community-based Friends of the Earth that had its origins in the anti-nuclear movement, had been lobbying against whaling in Australia since 1973.
Its pragmatic, non-partisan approach to the issue made it the ideal lobbying machine to complement the strategies of the anti-whaling warriors who were about to descend on Albany.
As an Australian entity, Project Jonah made its first big splash when it launched a 12-metre whale on Canberra's Lake Burley-Griffin during the 1977 IWC meeting.
``Willie'', as he was known, later joined singing and dancing demonstrators on the grass outside Canberra's Lakeside Hotel, where the meeting was being held, and whaling suddenly emerged as a possible election issue.
But the anti-whaling movement knew that closing down the whaling station in Albany was no fait accompli.
Western Australia was an extremely conservative state and conservationists were widely seen as interlopers trying to do locals out of their jobs.
The Last Whale opens the curtain on a dangerous game of hostilities in which the hunters were hunted.
Whaling boat crewmen were tough souls, the town and their families depended on the success of their hunt, and the handful of activists who infiltrated their world were treated like a real and present danger.
Pash, who was a cadet reporter for the Albany Advertiser during the tension-filled months of the local anti-whaling campaign, takes us on thrilling rides aboard the whaling boats, fearful adventures on the Zodiacs that trailed the whalers, and gives us entertaining insights into the confrontations between the warring parties.
It's a dispassionate account that peers into the lives of both the whalers and the protesters in the lead-up to the anti-climactic last whale hunt on November 21, 1978.
It also provides a brief run-down on where they all are and what they're doing, 30 years on.
The book has received plaudits from best-selling West Australian novelist Tim Winton, who describes it as ``a timely reminder of how far we've come since the days of routine slaughter, of how hard conservationists fought to bring it to an end ...''
Pash, a news and information company executive now living in Sydney, says he has spent much of the past 30 years researching the time he spent ``floating around the edges as an observer''.
He has done his best to sort ``fact from myth'', he says, and the result is an eminently readable account of the fear and loathing on Australia's last whaling frontier.
On November 21, Pash will attend a reunion of whalers at the Cheynes whaling station, now a museum called Whale World.
The Last Whale, by Chris Pash. Fremantle Press. RR: $29.95.