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    Views[274] “I couldn’t give this boat away” he says as we return from the last trip of the season. The paint is worn away in the familiar places hands rest in the wheelhouse, symbolic of his fondness for the Caroline. However the statement doesn't carry the romance it suggests; he honestly believes the boat and the commercial fishing license it carries is so burdened with regulation and expenses and the jobs in the mines so much more attractive, no one will ever take over at the wheel of the Caroline and Point Samson will no longer be a fishing village. Views[568] Eoin rolls another cigarette as we steam towards Point Samson harbour “A friend told me she’d given up twenty years ago but could still pick one up again at any second… sounds like twenty years of torture… and besides, everything I do is timed in cigarettes. It takes 2 to get the anchor down.” Views[649] Life on board the trawler doesn’t suit many. The auxiliary motors for the freezers are loud and the boat vibrates all day and all night, the prawns eventually irritate even the toughest hands and the Pilbara heat is relentless. Competing against the opportunities offered in mining Eoin has difficulty finding staff, yet whenever his young deckhands show potential he urges them not to come back the next season; to stop wasting their talent with him and get decent jobs. Despite his modest income his wages are notoriously generous. Views[620] Since he first started working as a deckhand the prawn season has been shortened from all year to just 3 months in attempt to protect the area from over fishing. Eoin has always caught enough prawns to support his family but most family businesses have closed from the pressure of corporate owned commercial boats that only come for the short season. He laments how regulations have pushed the smaller fishermen to find mining jobs. “It doesn’t make sense, they make the season shorter but don't put a size limit on the boats. Each time the season gets shorter, the boats get bigger.” Views[702]
     
    Eoin’s prawn trawler the Caroline M. is recognised by the ship-loader operators when he steams past the titanic machines and ships of Australia's largest iron ore export terminal. On Western Australia's Pilbara coast Eoin is returning home to Point Samson, a nearby fishing village. Lucrative wages have drawn people here from all over the world competing for jobs; the most highly paid unskilled labour on earth. The majority of local residents now work in the mines and Eoin is now Point Samson's last remaining fisherman. Views[762]     

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