Cooked Crayfish Fresh From the Sea

The photograph on this page which appeared as the cover of the December 1968 edition of the Gisborne Photo News must be one of the most celebrated Gisborne images from the last 50 years. The photo was taken on the reef at Tatapouri. The two chaps who supposedly caught the crayfish with their bare hands are the famous surfing brothers Allan and Terry Byrne.

John Logan admits the photographic concept was his. Using the Byrne boys as the male models was an obvious choice as they were well known local surfers and watermen and friends of John and his brother, Geoff Logan, who was the ‘talent scout’ for the shoot.

Fleur Ferris remembers it being the summer holidays and she had just turned 16. Geoff Logan turned up at her parent’s house where she was roused from a morning sleep-in and persuaded to put on a pair of bikinis.

“I didn’t really want to do it at first,” said Fleur, 43 years down the track (when the story was written for Beachlife magazine in 2011). “But I was still half asleep and was talked into it. The other girl Geoff had rounded up for the picture, Cilla Meredith, didn’t have a bikini of her own for some reason and I had to lend her a spare pair of mine.”

“Both pairs were latest fashions from Day and Dance and I remember choosing the white ones for me as I thought they would make me look really tanned. Duh! It turned out to be the wrong choice. The caption accompanying the cover photo stated: “Part of the fun of living on the East Coast is going to the beach, swimming and fishing for crays. Allan Byrne, Cilla Meredith, Fleur Ferris and Terry Byrne are shown with part of their catch taken at Tatapouri. While it is an enjoyable sport, care must be also taken as you never know what you are going to meet down there.”

It seems like "down there" the water must have been close to boiling for it was obvious to Photo News readers that the crays were definitely not long out of the cooking pot.

All involved in the shoot say they have been continually teased about the ‘cooked crays’ since the day the photo was taken.

“What added to it,” says Fleur, “was that the photo was used for some years later in an airline brochure on the NAC planes in and out of Gisborne. There was no getting away from it!”

The caption goes on to say: “Incidentally, Allan Byrne, who went to the World Surfing Championships in Puerto Rico recently, was placed twelfth. During the contest Allan outpointed Fred Hemmings in the mid-finals. Hemmings went on to win the world title.”

The only thing none of the people involved can remember is where the crayfish came from.

But Fleur says they were typical of the size of crays caught off our local beaches in the 1960s.