Prideaux Family

Leo, or Len as we call him, above all was a strong, singular yet complex character that called things as he saw them, --- usually black or white. Once he "sized you up", you had to toe the line. It was tempting to see his hardness as mere prejudice, unless you knew that before he was a conservative, he was a communist. Before he was an atheist, he followed scientology.

His favourite saying and mantra was, "if you cant join em, beat em."

He was a thinker and a doer with no limits. Len was a staunch family man, and a patriot, as were many of his time that experienced a world war. He considered himself to be an authority on human nature, and that he was.

The name "Prideaux" is of English origin. Or at least as English as was William The Conqueror, who installed all his mates as barons and Earls when he took over England just as Halley’s comet lit up the skies in AD 1066. According to Uncle Charlies research, one Lord Paganus Prideaux owned no less than two castles in the Cornwall district.

From such auspicious beginnings, we come eight hundred years down the track to the first Leonard Prideaux, rope maker and seaman, born 1837 in Wiltshire county, transported in 1863 to the Swan River Colony for 8 years as a convict. That was our Lens grandfather, ---- convicted of arson at age 26.

In what some of us might claim is a "typically Prideaux" dilemma, he had set fire to a man’s haystack and a woman’s barn. The lady refused to lay charges, but the man insisted on full prosecution, and Leo Prideaux was out of the way forever.

The Prideaux' on our side, seem to have always been intimately linked to the sea. John Prideaux was listed as lost at sea in 1845, somewhere off the coast of America. His son, [Leo, the transportee], netmaker and fisherman was lost at sea from a whaler in 1890. Walter Prideaux, was a marine engineer when enlisted for the Boer War and later World War I. Len was a west coast fisherman followed by myself and my son Ben in crayfishing.

Walter Prideaux and Pearl Manning married at Kundip in 1908, raising eight kids over the depression years at their homestead, "Dilkera" on the Lower King River near Albany. Len was the second youngest of brothers Ossie, Frank, Vic and Charlie, and sisters Elsie, Lorrie and Pat. Oyster harbour was their playground, their sanctuary and their field of dreams.

After their beloved Dilkera was burnt out in early 1940, Dad moved to East Perth as the clouds of war gathered. He was manpowered whilst working part time installing essential services for Hume Pipe in Subiaco.

Len joined the Royal Australian Airforce, where from Pearce Air base he often travelled to the sea at Lancelin to set up practice bomb targets on the island. Mum, Dorothy May Dines, and Dad, Leonard Edgar Prideaux, married just before he left for Darwin to fight the Japanese.

Upon de-mob, they bought an old international truck with the help of Mums war pension money, and dad worked as a freelancer on the construction of the Wellington Dam. He was earning up to ten quid a week, and soon traded up to a new Ford 500.

Their lives were moving rather quickly now. We kids, Pam, Peter and Lee were born whilst renting in Churchill Avenue Subiaco. We soon moved to an ex hospital building they bought in Barker Rd.

Friends Len made in the trucking business, and the unbridled union malfeasance on the docks during those times were instrumental in his determination to go back to the ocean.

In 1954, he and Maurie Herdsman built the first Marlin, a 32 foot plywood vessel in the truck shed at Subiaco. It was a "launch boat", as his Italian fisher friends later called it. They were genuinely concerned that a boat without a sail could not be a fishing boat.

Not afraid of hard work, he ended up working a 96-pot cray licence by himself for 3 years, later gearing up to catch sharks, interspersed with Dhufishing in the winter.

In 1962 they bought a lot in Lancelin for 50 quid and built the first brick house in town. It was, and still is, a shanty. At about this time, mum and we kids spent more time back at the Subi house because there was, [and still is], no high school in Lancelin.

Dad was one of the few fishers who knew how to make the stick pots without a shaping frame and often helped friends in making their own gear. A lot of our childhood was taken up in the decidedly social event of "making the pots", in the off season. This involved cutting the swamp or sandstone sticks, carting them and the rangoon neck and bottom cane to Lancelin. The women were often left to peal the sticks whilst the men made the necks. And so it went.

In 1973 Dad lashed out and built one of the early aluminium boats, a 48-footer that cruised at 16 knots! They also borrowed $100000 to develop 12 flats on the block in Subiaco, [also called Marlin]. Our Perth base moved to Bicton, then finally to Sorrento.

Managing the payments nearly drove the business to the wall, but as dad would say, "when times get tough, you just shut the gate". The flats brought a dividend later when sold as apartments.

Mum and dads first grandchildren, Rachel and Lara were born to Pam and Brian around this time, so all in all, times were pretty good. Soon Lee and Rolly's kids Mark and Jess came along, adding to the joy. Later, Denise and I added Adie, Ben and Cass to the throng.

"And it was good", --- as the bible would say!

I remember Dad saying how he would drive into town and see all the rich people with their boats and big houses, thinking how he would be able to retire soon and take it easy. That never happened.

In 1976 Len was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and stomach cancer, which required multiple radical surgeries. His actual survival at this time in medical history was a bit of a miracle. The doctor said that his strong heart was a major factor. "No matter what drugs we had to give him, his heart just kept on keeping on." He was in a coma for 6 weeks. Later, he had to modify his eating habits, but he always managed to fit in his beloved Victoria Bitter.

In this period, the decision was made for me to drop out of my uni PhD studies and take over the business. That was a fortunate outcome, one that Len ultimately approved of. He was always keen to provide a backstop for the family and continue the seafaring tradition. He always maintained an authority and virtual veto rights over family business, one that he never enacted. His will was respected by all. Len was well pleased with his position of patriarch and loved it when Ben finally took over the boat in 2010.

Mum and Dad lived comfortably in their house overlooking the Hilliary's Boat Harbour until dads admission to hospital a few weeks ago. The "family" now includes Chad, Claire, Meg, Rosco and James, and grows still. It was entirely appropriate that Meg, mother of Willow Pearl Prideaux comes from a Kalbarri fishing family. Chad and Adie team up as essential staff in the running of the cruise vessel True North. I always like to interpret our name in old French as Pri- d'eaux. Fairly literally, that translates as "to earn from the waters".

Great grandkids Lily, Jack, Willow and Indi have been mum and dads greatest gift.

The night he passed, we, the whole bloody mob, had just returned from a visit where he was looking comfortable and alert. We were having a drink light-heartedly reminiscing about Dads humour, his antics, his trials and tribulations when we got the news. The great man was gone.

We now have May, the matriarch. And so it goes.