67. CAIRNS FISHING 1970s

                                                 Tiger shark about to bite camera lens port.

                                                                        Lizard Island - a first view (1967)

16mm film frame

Story and pictures in Walkabout magazine.

 Denis "Brizaka' Wallace, Peter Bristow, Peter R. Wright

The big game fishermen from USA discovered Cairns, Queensland in the late 1960s thanks to these three and their mentor, George Bransford.

Hotelier Paul Kamsler (senior) upgraded his motel to a standard not previously seen in Australia.  This was The original Trade winds.

In 1972 for example, when I arrived to make a fishing film,  there were just three decent restaurants in Cairns plus The Tradewinds.

A string of very old hotels in the area we called The Barbary Coast.

A Chinese restaurant that took a lot of courage to dine there.

This was the Cairns that billionaires (in today's adjusted monetary values) came to visit. The fishermen would charter a game fishing boat plus a 'mother ship' to live aboard at night and work their way north through The Ribbon Reefs as far as Lizard Island for their ten or two week safari seeking the giant Black Marlin - in that early era regularly caught at 1000 pounds or higher.

 

Cairns was changing quickly.  New large hotels in the early 1980s, The Tradewinds replaced by the Pacific International - now run by the Kamsler sons with Paul Senior in his own office within the hotel as the unofficial Austrian ambassador.

                                                             Captain Peter Wright (1970s)

John Frankenheimer A Hollywood legendary Producer-Director who remained a low-profile when in Cairns with many his friends in the fishing clique.

                                         Peter Bristow and Peter Wright (visiting) in Madeira.