From Ripples from the Zambezi (chapter 6) by Dr. Ernesto Sirolli
Esperance is a very isolated rural community in Western Australia.
In 1985 Esperance was going through a difficult time. It was the height of a rural recession, and Esperance with its sandy, salty soil had one of the highest rural debts in Australia. The fishing industry was also in recession. After years of free-for-all, catch-as-much-as-you-can, the tuna population had started to decline and the federal government had introduced a quota system, which played havoc with the local industry. The fishing fleet had gone from 45 to 7 boats, and those fishermen left were the ones with the lowest quota available and the highest debt. At the time, Esperance had a population of 8,500 people, with another 1,500 living on the surrounding farms. 500 people were registered as unemployed, with youth unemployment nearing the 20% mark.
I arrived in Esperance with a lot of faith, but not much else. My faith was in people, and in their universal characteristics of wanting to become something, of enjoying good work, of achieving respect and self-respect, by performing beautifully. I had faith that in Esperance, like anywhere else in the world, there would be individuals that at that very moment were dreaming, discussing, even sketching at their kitchen table their ideas for that special something they wanted to do. I knew, not only with my head, but with my heart as well, that the only thing I had to do was to become available to those people and to “facilitate” the transformation of their dreams into good work.
But where would I find those people if I didn’t know anybody there? I was left in town by the ministerial advisors who flew back to Perth on the same day after giving me a list of names of locals who might help me, a car to drive, and keys to the minister’s empty house.
The following three days I spent meeting some of the local people who were either professionally or voluntarily involved with local development. My question to them was always the same: “Do you know anyone in town who is currently thinking of becoming involved in setting up a business?” Their answer was always the same: “No!” Some would elaborate by saying that that was precisely the reason for Esperance’s unemployment. The farmers and the fishermen were in strife and nobody would risk investing locally. Of the local unemployed people, some would say they were too lazy and too well looked after by the government to be willing to work.
Not convinced, I asked the manager of the local Youth Support Scheme to organize a meeting with the unemployed who used the centre. At that meeting two young people came out. One had just arrived in town and the other one was about to leave; neither had any idea for self-employment.
The manager of the Commonwealth Employment Services organized a similar meeting. Out of 500 registered unemployed, two long-term unemployed people came to that meeting. One didn’t know what to do, the other one had been struggling for months trying to set up a fish-smoking business. He had built a $250 smoking kiln in his garage and started selling some fish, but he had only succeeded in having his smoked fish confiscated and his embryonic business strangled by bureaucratic red tape.
He was angry and terribly frustrated but I couldn’t stop smiling. After five days and four long nights I had found my first client: somebody in Esperance who wanted to do something! Having been retrenched from a local fish-processing plant, Mauri Green, a skilled fish processor, formerly from “fish wise” New Zealand, had attempted to overcome his predicament by doing what came naturally to him: processing fish for sale. He had built a smoke oven in his garage, smoked fish, and started to sell it … and collided head-on with the local health inspector. A former friend, the health inspector tasted the fish, liked it very much, but proceeded to confiscate it on the grounds that Mauri’s garage did not comply with health regulations.
Not having any money to move his smoke oven to an approved building, Mauri had tried to gain the support of local and metropolitan industrial development bureaucrats. His request for assistance had failed to dent the elephantine skin of those supposedly in charge of small business development. His enterprise was considered insignificant compared to “real” economic development and Mauri had been given the treatment that all aging unemployed who tinker in their garages would get — a terse dismissal.
After dozens of questions, I asked him if he really wanted to make a living by smoking fish. I emphasized the “really” and he looked at me puzzled, then he asked me why I wanted to know. I told him that if I put all my energy behind his idea, he could end up to his neck in smelly fish, and if he didn’t love that life, I would rather not help him do something he might later regret. He looked at me in disbelief — fish was his life, his love, and he was passionate about it. That sealed our working relationship.
My first week in Esperance was nearly over, and I had no written report (again) of what could or should happen; instead I had a person’s dream in my hands to show those who had commissioned my research. The Minister for Regional Development arrived back in Esperance for the weekend. Away from his office and telephone, he had time to talk to me. I told him of my belief in people and their ability to create wonderful products
if they were only given the chance to do so. I described to him my unease with “top-down” solutions or “big” economic development plans, which tended to discard or overlook the small but exciting possibilities found locally.
There are people right here,” I told them, “people who have the passion to create products, goods, new markets, and quality services, and who, if believed and encouraged, could become a vibrant contribution to the economy, providing diversity of employment and renewed hope for the rural sector!” We had by this time adjourned to the local Chinese restaurant where, after two hours of passionate discussion and fiery food, I was given a one-month contract to become available to anyone in Esperance “who wanted to do something”!
Never take no for an answer
My first project was to get Mauri’s smoked fish business off the ground. He needed to get a loan, and I contacted on his behalf the government agency that had rejected his application. The person at the other end of the telephone “only worked there” and, no, he couldn’t tell me the reason for the first rejection. I was told that a committee made the decisions and that its proceedings were confidential. My reply was that Mauri was a long-term unemployed person, that his activity and status fitted precisely the agency’s
guidelines, and that I wanted to resubmit personally the application to the next committee meeting. He told me that that was out of the question, and I replied that unless some cooperation was shown by his department, I could find out, through the Freedom of Information Act, the reason for the rejection and I would not hesitate to go to the press if I found any discrepancies between his department’s guidelines and the committee’s allocation of public funds to the long-term unemployed. At that point, his tone of voice became more conciliatory and he told me that, even though it was confidential, he would tell me the reason for the loan refusal.
The committee, he said, thought that Mauri’s activity would compete with the local fishermen. I must have screamed into the phone because the guy at the other end went very quiet. “He is not competing with the fishermen, he is buying from them, and adding value to the fish and selling it again. Can you please explain to your city people’s committee the difference between fishing, which is done with hook and line, and smoking, which is done with heat and flames!” The application was resubmitted and after a month a very nicely written letter and a check for $4000 arrived.
A shed in the industrial area was rented and, after consultation with the health inspector, a minimum amount of partitioning and special fittings were installed. Mauri then took the home-built kiln out of his garage and, with the help of a couple of friends, set it up in the newly partitioned shed. Esperance Fish Processors was born legitimate!
An official opening was organized at which much beer-smoked fish and emotion were displayed. The Minister and Local Member was centre stage and were obviously enjoying the first fruits of my work. Nearly three months had gone by since my first visit to Esperance. While working with Mauri, I had asked a number of local people to help me by forming a support committee. I wanted local people to be fully informed of my activities and to assist me in finding local resources for my clients. I also wanted them to spread the word around about my availability to work, in total confidentiality, with any local person who wished to set up a new business or to expand an existing one.
In those first few months maybe a dozen people approached me. Among them were two tuna fishermen who, having witnessed my work with Mauri, decided to see what I could do to help them. And help they needed since the federal government, concerned about the decline in fish stock, had imposed a drastic cut in their quota. The tuna industry was in the doldrums.
Unfortunately, the two fishermen came independently of each other and I had to come to terms with the fact that the local fishing community was not only in economic trouble, but also distrustful and divided, with its members still hurting from a cooperative venture that had failed miserably only a year before. Good mates at the pub, the local tuna fishermen didn’t want to work together any more and faced their industry’s decline in bitter isolation. After speaking separately with those first two fishermen, realized that their problem was exacerbated by the low price their tuna was fetching. They only had one buyer, a tuna cannery, which had a monopolistic control of their industry and offered them sixty cents per kilogram for any quality tuna. There had never been a market for high quality tuna and the fishermen had traditionally been pushed to fill their boats with as much tuna as possible regardless of its size or condition. A truck from the cannery would await the boats at the pier, and the bloodied tuna would be simply thrown into steel boxes and taken away.
The drastic cut in the tuna quota had meant that instead of 60,000 tons, the
Australian tuna fishermen were left with only 14,000 to fish. Of these, the Esperance fishermen only had the right to less than 140 tons, which left them with a combined annual gross revenue of less than $300,000, hardly enough to keep up with their boat repayments. I expressed my concern to both fishermen I spoke to and suggested that a meeting be organized with the other five tuna fishermen to seek a common solution. They shook their heads at that idea and made it clear that, short of a miracle, nothing would make them work together. It took a good three months for the “miracle” to eventuate. I met more fishermen at Mauri’s business launch and had the impression that my work there had not gone unnoticed. Finally, one morning five of the local fishermen came to see me. I had the immediate impression that they had begun to work together because they had a strategy already worked out and were ready to try it on me!
I was working for the government, they said, and I should go back to the government and tell the people in charge that they had destroyed the tuna industry. “Now,” they said, “the only hope is to catch big tuna for the Japanese market.” But money was needed for a big boat and research, and they wanted me to get it out of the government. The argument was delivered with great passion and fists were slammed on the table to make clear their contempt for the ruthless government intervention. I told them that my task as a consultant was to help Esperance people and that I would have my contract renewed only if I succeeded in doing so. My loyalty, therefore, was with them and I wanted to help, but my understanding of their predicament was different from theirs and so was my proposed course of action. I knew that the government had already given a research grant to fishermen on the south coast to find the elusive big tuna to be air freighted to Japan. The results had been dismal, and I doubted that the government would give them a $150,000 grant to try again. I also told them that their reputation as fishermen was very poor and that the Fisheries Department bureaucrats considered them to be young, unruly “cowboys” among the tuna fishermen.
They looked totally deflated. If I wasn’t a government representative and if I wasn’t willing to make a representation on their behalf, then what was that meeting all about? I told them that unless they could find alternative markets for the small tuna they had easy access to, they would never be better off. Instead of trying to develop a fishery for the mythical big fish, they should carry out marketing research to dispose of their usual catch at better prices. They asked me how much it would cost to do a marketing study and I told them that the question wasn’t how much a marketing study would cost, the question was how much they were prepared to invest in one. They looked at each other, thought for a while, and finally the figure of $200 each was agreed upon. If they had been ready to ask for a large amount of money from the government, when it came to their dollars, the amount had shrunk considerably. Nonetheless, with $1,000 pledged I advised the five to pen a common bank account under the name Esperance Sashimi Development Group, “sashimi” being the term they had used in our discussion on the highly priced tuna which the Japanese eat raw. Next I advised them to publicize and be proud of their newly found solidarity, and I told them that I would try to find some matching finance to assist with the marketing research.
This I did and, as in the case of Mauri, I didn’t get any satisfaction from approaching any of the various government agencies and assorted development corporations, which are supposedly there to help small business. Nobody wanted to get involved with the fishermen, and I was told repeatedly that those fishermen were “cowboys” who only fished when they felt like it, were uncommitted, would not cooperate, and could not be trusted. Such comments were repeated by local people who made it even harder to seek support for the project.
Finally, all other avenues being exhausted, I turned to the Local Member and asked for a matching $1,000 from his ministerial discretionary funds. He was willing to encourage the fishermen to work together and promptly obliged with a check. This gesture had a profound effect on the fishermen and, indirectly, on the town. Somebody trusted them, and the previously unruly and unmanageable fishermen became, from that day on, a different bunch who would show Esperance people a thing or two. While the money was being organized, I asked the director of the local technical college, who was a keen member of my support committee, whether he could finance a sashimi fish handling demonstration for the benefit of the fishermen, Mauri, and local restaurateurs. It would require finding a willing Japanese chef and paying for his fees, travel, and expenses to come to Esperance. In his inimitable style, that excellent man had the funds made available and a ticket donated by an airline the same day.
I found the Japanese chef in Perth, and a couple of weeks later we had a big day at the Esperance Youth Hostel, or rather in its kitchen. About 20 locals came to see the visiting chef at work and admired his skills in preparing a tray of sashimi and a tray of sushi made exclusively with fresh fish provided by the Esperance Sashimi Development Group. What happened that day would have effects far beyond our joint expectations and would change not only the fishermen’s attitude hut also Mauri’s fish smoking practices and showed how we could create wealth from Australia’s resources by value-added practices.
The fishermen had provided the chef with a 10 kilo tuna, which was average size for their catch. The fish was about one-sixth the size of the tuna that reached fabulous prices in Japan. At the end of the elaborate and meticulous preparations, we were invited by the chef to try the sashimi. One of the fishermen asked him if in fact that could be called sashimi because in the videos and other documentation he had seen only very big and very fatty fish were used in preparing that particular dish. He, and in fact all of us, were surprised to hear from our instructor that sashimi meant “raw” and
that the term had nothing to do with size or type of fish. Many varieties could be used to prepare that traditional and highly sought-after dish. Fat tuna, he said, was considered by the Japanese to be the most exquisite food and big tuna fetched as much as $200 per kilo. But small tuna, if killed and handled to Japanese standards, were widely used in sashimi preparations.
All of a sudden it dawned on the fishermen present that what they had been selling to the cannery for 60 cents per kilo could be sold to the Japanese for sashimi. The question, which was on everybody’s lips, was finally asked: “Do you mean to say that your restaurant would buy small tuna from us?” The answer was “yes, this is small but very fresh, very good tuna.” “And how much do you think your restaurant would pay for it?” came the immediate second question. The answer was $3.50 per kilo, nearly six times the price paid by the cannery.
At that moment, there was a long combined whistle of all those present, and I could hear the noise of their brains calculating! If all their catch could be sold at that price, the value of their catch would shoot to nearly three million Australian dollars which would be more than they made before the introduction of the federal quota. They would be able to catch less and make much more.
In Mauri’s case, witnessing the work of the Japanese chef gave him the idea to smoke tuna fillets and to try this new product versus the more conventional whole fish he had previously used. His experiment with the local tuna combined with his skill in using native local woods for flavour created an extraordinary product which launched his smokehouse into the gourmet market in the capital cities of Australia; it also created an additional market for the tuna once destined for the cannery.
Not long after that momentous sashimi demonstration day, I had the task of finding a consultant willing to undertake the marketing research for the Esperance Sashimi Development Group. Knowing that the “experts” in the Department of Fisheries considered the project unfeasible and that $2,000 could not buy me much time of an established marketing firm, I remembered a person whom I had met months before, and called him.
David Leith had come to meet me on the advice of a mutual friend who knew of my work with Mauri. David was at that time a frustrated public servant who was longing to leave his job if only he could find something challenging to do. Of New Zealand background, he had memories of his grandfather smoking fish, and the story of Mauri, as told by our friend, had made him want to meet me even though he had nothing specific to ask me or to propose. At the end of our first meeting, he told me that he would love to get involved with anything to do with fish and that, if the occasion presented itself, I should not to hesitate in calling him. On the chance that he could be willing to take up the daunting task of rescuing the Esperance tuna industry, I called him and explained the situation. David became interested and, as he then worked full-time, offered to come to Esperance during his Christmas holiday. The amount of money available was really small, but that didn’t concern him. What worried him was the fact that he had never seen a tuna in his life. But he would do his best for the fishermen if they were prepared to take him for what he was, somebody with an economics background but with no experience in marketing fish.
I told him that, as the experts had given the project no chance at all, we knew that his mission was “impossible” and we would settle for the best that he could do. A meeting was organized, and I introduced David to the fishermen with these words: “This is David. He has never seen a whole tuna in his life, and he is here to help you!”
And help he did. Following up our experience with the Japanese chef, he introduced the project to all the Japanese restaurants in Perth, only five at that time, and then he rang all the other Japanese restaurants across Australia. Convinced that a market could be found, he took four months leave from work, borrowed $10,000 from his bank, and signed an exclusive contract with the fishermen. He took the product to Singapore where it sold for AUS $11.70 per kilo. He then resigned from his job, set up his own company, and, at the start of the new fishing season (eight months after his first meeting with the fishermen), sent five fish to Japan, where they were individually auctioned. After one week a telegram came back from the Japanese distributor saving “fish A1″!
The following week a representative from that company came to Esperance and, in partnership with another large tuna fishing company from South Australia, an agreement was reached for the establishment of a sashimi processing plant in Esperance. The new plant was built in twelve weeks and, that fishing season, 140 tons of tuna was air freighted to Japan at the average price of a cool $15 per kilo!
We all had big smiles on our faces that season. The impossible had been done and the sceptics, both in Perth and Esperance, had to eat their words. Mauri’s smoked tuna and the Esperance Sashimi Development Group became the “good news” items not only in the local press but also in the state papers. As if by magic, Esperance was no longer a town in recession. Things were happening there, the name of Esperance being heard, and the locals, all of them, including those who had never believed that their own neighbours deserved to be trusted and helped, basked in the glory.
Can you do it again?
The success of the sashimi enterprise was a turning point in my work in Esperance. Before the opening of the sashimi plant, I had been approached by quite a number of individuals but never by the “establishment,” that is, the wealthy local business people and farmers. The publicity that surrounded the launch of the new fishing venture, however, was such that some of the farmers started to take notice.
One of them expressed the feeling of the entire farming community by saying to me: “If those idiots of fishermen can do a thing like that, there must be something really wrong with us farmers.” He was referring, of course, to the inability of farmers to take control of their products and to make more money adding value to them. It was in recognition of what those “idiots of fishermen” had achieved that I was asked by a farmer to help solve the recurrent problem of getting rid of the old ewes, the mutton that nobody wanted and that was so difficult to dispose of.
Year after year millions of old ewes would hit the market during the same months and the price would collapse to the extent that often farmers who sent the ewes to market for sale at auction not only wouldn’t receive a cent, they would be billed for the transport!
Mutton was another seemingly insoluble problem and affected hundreds of farmers in the Esperance area and tens of thousands Australia-wide. I asked the farmer who sought my help whether he wanted to research the problem individually or as a group and he told me that, since it would cost money, he would try to get some of his “mates” involved. He got back in touch with me with 48 other farmers who pledged $100 each towards a feasibility study to try to find a way of not losing money disposing of the old ewes. My task was to find somebody to do the job, and this time I had no qualms whatsoever about approaching “non-experts”, having discovered, through David’s experience, that experts often knew too much to be able to look at old problems with fresh eyes.
Ted Lefroy and John McComb had an interesting and varied background with degrees in agricultural economics but no specific insight into the marketing of mutton. In their early thirties, they were both self-employed and willing to try their hand at the job. During the months that followed, they came up with a specific business plan which transformed a certain yearly loss into net profit. Their plan had the remarkable title “NEW USES FOR OLD EWES,” and it looked at commissioning the local abattoirs to slaughter the old ewes for a fixed fee and to return the bodies and skins to a farmer-controlled company. The meat would then be processed into small-goods and the skins, after being chemically depilated, would be pickled and sold. Finally, the wool would be sold as a separate and valuable item.
The most extraordinary part of the plan was the latter part. Traditionally the ewes would be sent to slaughter or to the markets after being shorn at the cost of $1 each. Ted and John’s suggestion was that the ewes be slaughtered with their wool on. The wool would be removed chemically after the slaughterhouse had returned the skin. Sold at auction, the wool produced by this method would fetch eight percent less than shorn wool but, since it came from a dead animal, it was exempt from the payment of 10% duty on shorn wool. With this system, not only would the farmers save $1 by not shearing, they would make two percent more out of their old ewe’s wool.
John and Ted demonstrated to the farmers in the group that the combined value of the
small-goods, skins, and wool added up to a tidy profit and reminded the farmers that, if they wanted to work together, they could find solutions for even seemingly intractable problems.
Twenty-seven farmers came together to look at what else they could possibly do to stop soil erosion and utilize their marginal land. They financed another remarkable study conducted by one of their former “enemies”: Keith Bradby, the most vocal of the local environmentalists! Keith was a very active local “greenie” — a radical environmentalist who had been influential in stopping new land releases in Western Australia. He had enormous love and respect for the local native flora and was able to show the farmers that the scrub, which thrived on their marginal land, had the potential to provide wildflowers and seeds, which had a commercial value.
Another project was then launched. Soil salinity and erosion plagued Esperance farmers to the point that ten percent of each farm’s land was considered “marginal” — not fit for agriculture. With the assistance of Keith, local awareness of the delicate ecosystem grew so much that a special course in revegetation was organized by the local technical college and 65 people enrolled.
My greatest satisfaction came from a remark made by the president of a local farmer’s organization who for years had been carrying on a written feud in the local paper with “greenie” Keith. “You know,” he said to me, “for years I have been fighting with Keith, and I can hardly believe that tomorrow he will be coming to visit my farm, paid by me, to tell me what to do on my marginal land!” I had started to trust the locals, and now they had started to trust each other.
One year after my first day there, the news from Esperance was good.
