Don’t be misled by this book’s title; it is much more than that.
While on holiday in Western Australia’s Kimberley Region recently, your reviewer drove out the Cape Leveque road on the Dampier Peninsula and called in at the Cygnet Bay Pearls farm.
That ramshackle establishment was intriguing and impressive. Rambling around, I found a little shop where this book was on sale. Rather put off by the title, I was, however, after looking a bit further, soon engrossed in this delightful tome.
It is not in any way the romantic tosh that its cover may indicate. Rather, it is a fascinating biography that covers a really impressive business history. Alison Brown, the matriarch of the Cygnet Bay establishment, is now in her seventies, but she married into the pioneering Brown family of pearlers as a-nineteen-year-old Perth university student. She may be the focus of the book, but it also covers a considerable amount of family and business history.
The Browns are courageous, clever, dogged, hard-working, patient and resilient people. Their now flourishing pearl culture business is good evidence of that. Alison Brown has been there, through thick and thin, almost all the way.
Along with the volatile pearl industry, the book details the vessels and equipment that serve it and the people, good and bad, who were or still are, employed in it.
It is a fascinating tale that is a pioneering business history, a family history and gives a good glimpse at what works, or doesn’t work, in terms of boats in the pearling business.
It is a fascinating book and great history.
Authors: Kristin Weidenbach with Alison Brown
Available from Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, Cape Leveque, Western Australia
