Steve Hopper

So we moved over there and they lasted about, my parents lasted about three years in Perth and left when I was halfway through the last year of high school.

So

I wanted to go to university in Western Australia and stayed on in one of the colleges to finish high school and then go into an undergraduate degree.

Well, he was a self-taught radio technician.

So when World War II came along, he was caught up in teaching for the first three years, teaching how to use this newfangled thing called radio.

And then he was commissioned in the RAAF to go into New Guinea and parts of Indonesia in active service on a range of aircraft.

When the war finished, which happened to be his birthday, which was rather nice for him, he eventually came back and settled at Byron Bay where his parents were.

They had a chook farm then, which unfortunately the family didn't hang on to.

But Dad decided that the prawn fishing industry, which was just starting at Byron Bay,

But the model there was you went out each day and made your catch and then you had to come back on shore and unload your catch on the land and off it went.

And the idea of motherships was just emerging.

And motherships would only work if there was good radio communication.

So Dad used his radio skills to create an environment where a small number of trawlers could go out and stay out for as long as they liked, rather than coming in each day.

Not with my father.

I was a bit young, but he had a brother who initially assisted him on his first trawler, my Uncle George and Aunty Clare.

and they ended up getting their own trawler and working Moreton Bay.

So I was then about eight, and they took me out quite often.

I was... Aunty Clare used to collect shells, and she was keen to try and foster my dawning interest in animal and plant life, and...

and making collections.

So I remember fondly going out with them, eyeing off the trawl, which was mostly benthic, you know, bottom-dwelling organisms, but incredibly rich in the kinds of animals and some plants you saw.