A two-part Spectrum documentary.
Spectrum 918. For five generations, the Heberley family lived to hunt the southern right, the sperm and the great blue whales from the Perano whaling station on Arapawa Island at the entrance to Tory Channel.
Charlie Heberley, arguably New Zealand's greatest gunner and his son Joe, the last gunner, recall the excitement and the danger of those days.
Charlie shows producer Alistair McAlpine the wreck of the sailing ship "Canterbury" which was exposed during a storm, and an anchor off another "The City of Newcastle."
Charlie and Joe recall their family's whaling history which began 170 years previously with Charlie's great-grandfather who whaled around New Zealand and the Pacific and then established the first shore whaling station in New Zealand in the Tory Channel with Captain Johnny Guard in 1830. Charlie worked with the Perano family for several years.
He and Joe decribe how a whale hunt would progress and the dangers involved. Charlie explains how they would make sure a harpooned whale was killed as quickly as possible by delivering an explosive harpoon to the back of the neck.
Spectrum 919. Charlie and Joe recall working with the Perano family and the close-knit nature of the whaling community, whose families had worked together for many generations.
Charlie recalls the National Film Unit and director Roger Mirams coming to make a film about the Perano operation. He says in the 51 years of operation 4 men were killed on the job. He says the whale factory was a dangerous place, as well as the boats themselves. Joe recalls a whale charging a boat off Great Barrier Island.
1960 was a bumper year for the Cook Strait whalers. They harpooned 226, mainly sperm whales, the biggest catch ever. But in the southern oceans, the Russian and Japanese factory ships took over 42,000. In 1961 the whales did not come through Cook Strait. The New Zealand whaling industry collapsed.