Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Coming the raw prawn in Fremantle

Watching John Howard on the news last night I got the feeling he's fast running out of options. He seemed flustered and his rhetoric has become overly repetitive and unconvincing. This week may well be his last in politics. Mind you, not if there are more stupid acts like the one yesterday where a purported eastern states teachers' union official disrupted one of Mr Howard's meetings by lunging at him. That sort of reckless action can only lose votes for Labor.

Mr Howard's chances haven't been assisted by the release of an official audit report confirming that immediately prior to the last federal election his government ministers had indulged in blatant pork barrelling by awarding large grants for projects in Liberal held electorates - against departmental advice. Furthermore, in many cases the projects never materialised. So much for Mr Howard's claims of responsible economic management.

Over here in the electorate of Fremantle you wouldn't know there was an election running. The anointed replacement for Labor's Carmen Lawrence has been conspicuous by her silence. I can't even remember the woman's name. This flies in the face of a comment from Mr Rudd yesterday that no door in any electorate should not go unknocked in the quest for votes. Frankly, it seems to me that Fremantle's Labor candidate is lazy and complacent with her political ambitions. It could be that she doesn't deserve the support of the electorate. I don't understand why the Liberals haven't tried to capitalise on this. But I haven't heard anything from them either.

We successfully did a couple of important tasks in Freo yesterday. For a few years I've had an assortment of expired laser printer cartridges stashed away. They are such complex gadgets that it would be environmentally rude to dispose of them at landfill. There are companies that refill them and so yesterday we loaded them into the Yarris and delivered them to one of these places. The man said he had plenty thanks very much, but if we really needed them off our hands he'd take them to oblige us. We left them with him.

Next it was off to buy bananas at $1.45 a kilo and tomatoes at $1.99 a kilo. Our own tomato bushes are growing well and be fruiting by Christmas. By then I expect there'll be a tomato glut and the sellers will be desperate to dispose of theirs.

So all fruited and veged up we went to the the Fremantle fishing boat harbour to check out the prawns. Last week I bought a Women's Weekly cookbook titled. 50 Fast Prawns. ($4.95 at Kmart.) However, it's not much good having a prawn cookbook without prawns.

We Fremantle folk are very fortunate because there is a large prawn trawler fleet based at Fremantle. During the season, which has just ended, the trawlers voyage north along the coast to prawning grounds like Shark Bay. Read more detail about this by clicking here.

Many companies prefer Fremantle as a base because it's relatively safe from cyclones. The season for cyclones is just starting, so the trawlers are back here.

Some of these operators sell prawns direct to the public at a much cheaper cost than they can be bought at supermarkets and other retailers. The catch is that you have to buy them in carton quantities and then think of something to do with them. That's no problem if you have a copy of 50 Fast Prawns.

We went to a company called Correia Fisheries. Their selling area is in a large shed stacked with all sorts of heavy fishing trawler gear. The shed is on the waterfront of the fishing boat harbour. The cartons of frozen prawns for sale are in domestic freezers and replenished from a large freezer shipping-container as they are sold. It's all very basic.

Prawns are graded into sizes for packing, so there was a variety ranging from very large, to almost small. The latter being about the size of a man's little finger. There was also a grade called S&B - soft and broken. These prawns are the ones that John West would reject, but they are ideal if people don't mind a bit of imperfection. Maybe a crab took a nip here and there. Prawns have a lot of predators besides humans. The soft shells belong to prawns which had recently moulted prior to capture. The shells would normally have hardened up in a day or two.

The cartons come in two sizes, 5 kg and 10 kg. The better deal is on 10kg. We decided on a 10 kg carton of middle sized undamaged king prawns which were about 6 inches long. It cost us $110. That's $11 a kilo. They would be more than twice that in supermarkets. The Correia Fisheries people are quite happy to open the cartons for inspection prior to purchase. There was a steady trickle of customers coming through while we were making up our minds. We had never bought a carton of frozen raw (green) prawns previously.

In ten minutes we had them back home on our kitchen table - beautiful Western Australian king prawns (Penaeus latisulcatus) caught in the pristine waters of Shark Bay. Click here to see one.

I'd been a bit concerned they would be difficult to separate, but a good jolt to the carton by dropping it on the floor did the trick. That was one of the tips given to us by the man who took our money. We were going to rebag them in small lots, but after doing about ten bags I figured it would be much easier to simply make room in our chest freezer for the entire carton.

We kept enough crustaceans out to try our first experiment from 50 Fast Prawns tonight - "Skewered lemon and ginger prawns." Yum! They will go well with some French champagne-style wine I bought last week at Woolworths. About $4.50 a bottle so I acquired a dozen. "Such is life." as someone once famous tattooed on his solar plexus.

Now I have a tip for a few local friends who read this weblog. Yesterday I overheard one of the men at Correia Fisheries saying they were going to increase their prices in advertisements in the next week or so. Now is the time to get them. Next week may be too late.

© MMVII Paul R. Weaver.

About the writer

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a couple of million words.

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