Every summer my dad and his friends go crabbing. Creeping out of the house in the early hours of the morning they drive to an undisclosed location, launch their boat and crab for hours. They then return home around midday sunburned, smelly and triumphant – their record is an amazing 120 crabs.
After beers to cool off, they cook the crabs in enormous pots and woks on outdoor stoves. It’s a day of feasting and celebrating; home gardeners and hunter gatherers know that food tastes better when you’ve grown or caught it yourself.
I’ve never been invited to one of these outings but the other day my dad mentioned that he and one of his friends were going crabbing off the Semaphore jetty. (Semaphore is a lovely beachside suburb west of Adelaide, about 25 minutes from the city. Check out my review of Semaphore cafe, Whipped, here.)
I was keen to see how they did crabbing off a jetty so asked if we could come along. Dad was meeting his friend at 4:30am there so I said we’d be along as soon as the kids were up – usually around 6am, thanks to Master Toddler.
That morning we all slept in but we were at the jetty by 7:15am. It was a beautiful morning.
It wasn’t long before we spotted a familiar face – my dad. As he’d been there since 4:30am he was still rugged up to the nines, almost unrecognisable in his deer hunter hat, anorak and ugg boots (thankfully not in shot).
We continued on our way to the end of the jetty, passing a lone fisherman who wasn’t having much luck, and a beautiful pelican.
We met up with Uncle Teck Ho, my Dad’s mate who is also from Malaysia. Uncle Teck Ho is an amazing gardener – every time he visits my parents he brings them huge bags of fruit and vegetables from his garden.
We checked out the crab nets. Nowadays my dad and his friends use carp heads to bait the crab nets. They used to use chicken but this is now banned as the fishing authorities were worried that chicken would attract sharks.
Last time they went crabbing off the Semaphore Jetty, my dad’s friends caught 20 crabs. But today, despite the choppy water which is apparently good for crabbing, they only caught four: two blue crabs and two sand crabs.
We weren’t disappointed by the small catch though. It was lovely to be down at the beach so early in the morning and watch the sun coming up over the horizon. With so few people around, it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves – a rare gift.
We took the four crabs home and cooked them up. As there were so few we decided to make crab dip.
