Whale Tales with Wiggy and Alex

We’re sitting in Alex Nobbs’ snug little kitchen, buttering scones as we wait for our tea, surrounded by Wiggy Knapton’s collection of photos, old whaling equipment and model ships. ‘Kettle se boil’ – the kettle is boiling – and Wiggy (87) settles down beside his lifelong friend Alex (90) to reminisce about whaling days on Norfolk. Wiggy and Alex both worked at Norfolk’s last Whaling Station which operated from 1956 to 1962 at Cascade Bay.

Alex is a little shy but Wiggy is something of a whaling expert. He’s spoken about Norfolk’s whaling history to tourists at Progressive Dinners for years, and still does a weekly presentation for Baunti Tours. He also has an array of authentic harpoons and whaling tools, and has built his own small-scale models of whale boats from different eras.

Island Boys and Their Nicknames

Just five of the Cascade whalers are still with us: Leo ‘Skeet’ Anderson, John ‘Fanny’ Christian, Norman ‘Goof’ Le Cren, Alex ‘Lic’ Nobbs and ‘Wiggy’ Knapton. Norfolk Islanders love their nicknames and when Herbert William Knapton was born in 1938 he was immediately dubbed ‘Wiggy’ by his uncle ‘Christy’ Christian. Christy said his tiny nephew “looked like an earwig”, and the name stuck.

Alex and Wiggy grew up during World War Two, and after the war the island was facing many changes. Modern tourism hadn’t yet developed so, with a limited supply of local jobs, many young Islanders left Norfolk in the late 1940s and early 1950s. School leavers could either stick with a life of subsistence fishing and farming (supplemented by unreliable cash crops like bean seed), or seek better wages, employment and training opportunities overseas. Alex Nobbs and his brothers, Roy and Les, went to New Zealand looking for work.

A New Whaling Era Begins

In 1955, Andersons’ Meat Industries, later known as Norfolk Island Whaling Company, approached the Australian government about starting a new whaling operation on island. They were licensed to take 150 humpbacks in their first season and immediately began constructing the station. It was built by local labour, under the direction of the company’s Norwegian experts, and was designed to be a modern whale catching and processing plant.

Wiggy helped build the Cascade station from 1955-56. He remembers how important this new venture – and the sudden availability of well paid, steady work – was for Norfolk. Once it was finished the station started harvesting whales from August 1956, and thereafter ran 24 hours a day during the five-month whaling season (June to October); employing about sixty Norfolk men on 12-hour shifts.

There were some stoppages for unloading freight ships, bad weather or rough seas but, during the whaling months, Cascade was usually a hive of activity. Enough money could be earned in a season to cover expenses for the rest of the year, and still leave a little extra income for new farming machinery or household goods. Some men who’d left to find work, like Alex and Les Nobbs, came home and made a good living at the station. Most worked onshore, processing the humpbacks, but others were out at sea locating and bringing in the whales.

Chasing the Giants

Two small powered chaser boats with just a driver and gunner aboard went after them. Working in tandem, and communicating via radio, the lead boat would harpoon these powerful mammals, following their age-old northern and southern migratory trails, while the other boat shadowed them. The whales were shot and killed using harpoons with explosive heads, attached to a stout rope line, and fired from a big gun mounted on the bow.

The dead whale was tied fast to the boat’s side and a probe pushed firmly into its flesh to pump it full of compressed air, and keep it afloat until it could be towed by a bigger vessel back to Cascade. There the carcass was tied to a wire and hauled ashore by ‘Mighty Mouse’, a steam powered winch. Pulled up onto the station’s bottom deck, a whaling inspector then measured each whale to make sure it met the minimum length before processing began. To help conserve dwindling humpback numbers, the Australian government had the power to impose fines and penalties on companies harvesting young, undersized whales.

Dangerous Work on the Flensing Deck

Next, two men (flensers) chopped the whale into pieces using a flensing knife – a wicked, curved samurai-type blade on a long pole – like a lethal hockey stick – to remove the blubber, skin, and meat. Alex, and his older brother, Les, both flensed on the bottom deck and it was a tiring and sometimes dangerous job. The flensing knife was razor sharp, and had to be continually sharpened with a whetstone slotted into a leather belt buckled at the waist. Accidentally cutting yourself was not unusual and Alex once slashed his elbow so badly it needed stitching. Another local flenser, Robbie Chapman, was well-known for his quick, efficient work and could cut up a big whale, on his own, in 45 minutes.

The large sections of whale flesh were then hoisted to the top deck where they were cut into smaller pieces (about a metre square) by other workers – ready to go into the giant, steam-powered cooker. Wiggy worked in the separator room – “a cushy job” Alex teases – where the smaller chunks of skin, meat and blubber were pushed into the metal digester so the valuable oil (up to 10 tonnes per whale) could be cooked down and extracted. This process took about eight hours and the oil then passed into three large storage tanks. Later this would be pumped, via an undersea pipeline, to the company’s small tanker, MV Forso, which came regularly from Australia to collect it.

Wiggy remembers how Kris Boleroed, the Norwegian Plant Manager, tested the quality of Norfolk’s product in a unique way. He’d pour out a test tube of the whale oil, hold it up to the light, and drink it down like a glass of wine, exclaiming, “Ah, Viggy…very good!” In the first season 1,205 kilolitres of oil were produced and sent to Australia. The oil was used to make glycerine, margarine, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, soap and detergents. A drying plant attached to the digester meant that bones, offal and extraction leftovers could be converted into whale ‘meal’, which went to make fertiliser or livestock food. More than 3,500 bags of whale meal, each weighing 73 kg, were also exported in 1956.

There’s no doubt the Cascade station improved the island economy. Exports rose from $73, 100 in 1955-56 to $420,364 in 1960-61 – and Wiggy and Alex witnessed greater local prosperity in those years.

A Rapid Decline

However, with fast, motor-powered chaser boats and deadly harpoon guns, the whales had no chance against modern hunters and the humpback population fell rapidly. Stations operating from Moreton Bay, Byron Bay and Great Barrier Island in New Zealand were also severely impacting Pacific whale numbers, so returns were diminishing. 

Despite locals bringing in a raised quota of 170 humpbacks during Norfolk’s 1961 season, fewer whales were being sighted throughout the Pacific, and 1962 saw just four whales captured off Cascade in the first seven weeks of the season. The entire industry, world-wide, was seeing this trend. Blue, humpback, southern right and sperm whale populations were declining drastically; bringing all whale species perilously close to extinction. The demand, and price, for whale oil was also falling at this time, due to competition from vegetable oil producers.

By 1962 it’s estimated the number of humpbacks off Australia’s east coast had dropped from 15,000 to 500. The Cascade station closed that year ending the modern whaling era on Norfolk Island. Today nothing remains of the substantial two-storey structure – with its large holding tanks and submarine pipeline – which processed hundreds of humpback whales in its seven years of operation. The only remnant of Wiggy and Alex’s former workplace is the rusting digester, behind a safety fence at Cascade Bay, slowly disintegrating in the salty air.

They’re left, however, with fond memories of those days. They both remember using their earnings to buy brand new Triumph motorbikes, cruising around the island’s dirt roads, and leaving horseback riders behind in a cloud of dust. They also remember how you didn’t notice the stench of whale blubber and meat when you worked amongst it, but the strong, fishy odour clung to you. After finishing a shift, despite using the station showers, friends and family would say: “You smell – take a wash!”  

Respect for the Old-Time Whalers

Their whaling experiences gave Alex and Wiggy a greater respect for the bravery and endurance of the old-time Islanders who rowed their small wooden lighters into the open sea, and pitted themselves against giant humpbacks with only hand-held lances and harpoons. Sometimes those men were dragged miles from the rocky shore by whales struggling to escape or slowly dying. They risked being badly hurt or drowned if their boats were overturned by an injured or enraged whale. If they were lost in the darkness, they navigated by the stars or watched for beacon fires, lit on Norfolk’s steep clifftops, to guide them home.

A New Era for the Whales

Wiggy and Alex also did short whaling stints at the Byron Bay and Great Barrier Island stations. They were grateful for the work and wages from 1956-62  but feel it was sad to see such magnificent and intelligent mammals almost disappear from the earth. They’re pleased whale populations have recovered, and increased, in the last sixty years as almost all countries, including Australia, have completely banned whaling. Humpback numbers are at record highs and we’re able to again see these gentle giants following their migratory paths, through our waters, without human interference. Wiggy and Alex believe, along with other ex-whalers, that shooting these giants of the deep with a phone or camera is now the only way to go.