William Arthur North

William Arthur North (also known as Bill North Senior) was born and bred on Grasmere Road opposite the Mutton bird Road turn-off near Albany. His Father, Frederick Daniel North was the first Settler to that area in 1868. Bill was the youngest child in his family. There was an adopted sister Nellie, then Mary Agnes (Birdie), Jack Daniel, and Eva (Evaline) before him. The older children were educated at the Catholic school in Albany but by the time he and Eva were school age the school had opened at Elleker and he went there. His mother taught the girls sewing and proposed that her children would be quite adequately educated there.

When Bill was 12 years old and his Parents had gone to town on their horse and cart, he decided that he wasn’t going to go to school but instead he would put his little boat into the creek near his house and go duck shooting. When he went to grab his gun he didn’t realise that the trigger had got caught in the anchor rope and as he pulled it out it discharged and shot his right arm just about off above the elbow, 5 inches from his shoulder. All alone, he had to run to his Aunty Hortins who then lived on the corner of Mutton bird Road. They took him over to the Elleker Railway station (which was then called Torbay Junction) and took him to Albany 14 miles away on a pump trolley (a handcar) where he spent 3 months in hospital and had his arm amputated just below the shoulder. He had an artificial arm but hated it and rarely wore it. It was hard for him to re-learn everything left handed but he did. He was fiercely independent and developed great strength in his left arm. He chopped wood as powerfully and effectively as a professional woodcutter and never allowed his disability to hold him back.

Not to let a small thing like a disability stop him from doing as he wanted he later went on to be a Professional Fisherman. He married Katherine Hutchison in 1924 and built a farmhouse on a 160-acre farm near the Torbay Inlet where they would spend their entire life. From a very early age his Sons Ian and Fred North helped Bill with fishing before school and after school. In the war when they had petrol rations they would drag Bill’s old 19 foot wooden clinker boat from where they lived just off of North Road over to Mutton bird on an access track that they had cut to the beach. They would fish then drag the boat back home and go back and get the net then drag boxes of fish the few miles back. Life was tough but that is what they did back then. Bill originally had the salmon license for Mutton bird which was later taken over by his Son Fred North. They beach seined for smaller fish and had estuary licenses to fish. Bill could row a boat as good as anyone, he would bolt the oars together and row with his left hand. Mutton bird was a more challenging beach with the waves and could challenge anyone’s rowing ability at times but never his, and he had it down pat.

He was a knowledgeable about all things in the natural world. He was a skilled bushman. He would always be seen wearing an old suit, no belt but binder twine in its place, old flannel singlet, old akubra hat and no shoes, empty sleeve tucked into a coat pocket as he tramped along the beach or the track to Mutton Bird. He was a tease and loved to throw a provocative remark into a group and then sit back and watch the debate, particularly if it became heated. He would make an outlandish remark and not necessarily believe it himself, just to stir up a debate.

On the 12 September 1972, Bill drowned in Torbay Inlet aged 79 while going to set his nets. He was out looking for a boat that he had taken from his home a few Kilometres away. The proprietor of the Torbay Park Motel visited the floodgates area and saw Bill’s dinghy with just his dog in it. He alerted the authorities by which time his family began searching for him. His 10-foot dinghy was found wedged in floodgates at Torbay Inlet, 12 miles West of Albany.

His Sons Willian, Fred and Ian, as well as his Grandson Danny dragged the Inlet with nets. The following day they found his body in a stand up position just coming to the surface, about 300 yards from the mouth of the inlet.

As he aged the arthritis in Bill’s left shoulder, slowed him down and impacted his abilities. It was probably his arthritic shoulder, coupled with the cold that prevented him getting back into his dinghy that fateful September morning in 1972. He had always been able to swim like a dolphin, so it had to be a combination of age, arthritis and dreadful cold that took him. Traumatic as it was for his family, it was probably kinder for him to have gone while doing what he loved, than to have died a slow death imprisoned in a Nursing Home because that would have been how he viewed such an outcome.

On the 21 February 1998, his Grandson Daniel (Danny) North was found dead in Albany Harbour in 50 centimetres of water near where he lived at Panorama Caravan Park. This remains a “cold case” and his Father Fred was never the same after losing his Son. Fred died just 10 months later. The North family are well respected and well known Professional Fishermen from Albany. Bill’s legacy lives on and his memories are captured and treasured by his surviving family.