Journeying up and down the Maribyrnong River for almost 37 years, Blackbird captain Peter Somerville tells Benjamin Millar he delights in the environment and the people he meets.
What’s your connection with Maribyrnong?
I have always lived in the northwest. I have lived in Seddon for about 18 years; I had the chance of getting a small cottage and being close to my work area.
What do you love about the area?
That one word, multicultural. It’s always been so in the west. If we go back to the late ’50s and early ’60s, we could take our billies and saucepans to Jimmy Wong’s place up on Barkly Street; it was so easy to do all those things. Yes it’s grown, but we’ve had it here for years. Being in the west, we don’t have to go around the world for a meal, we just need to go down to Nicholson Street or down to Yarraville, and we can get a meal from anywhere.
What do you like about Blackbird cruises?
We’ve been doing the boat for coming up to 37 years now. I am coming up to 81 years of age. I love the environment you are in down the river, it’s nice to be able to have been on the river and to have seen the changes over the 30-odd years, from a polluted river system to a very clean river system now. The area is the same, you can only go up the river or down the river, but the scenery changes. Very minutely, but they are changes. It’s also the people you meet. I can give them a certain amount of history, but it’s the history that they leave that’s the big plus.
What wildlife have you seen on the Maribyrnong River?
We’ve seen dolphins, sea lions and fur seals. There is a lot of birdlife on the river. We have seen white-bellied sea eagles, swallows and sparrows, ibis, white-faced herons, plenty of cormorants. And when you see cormorants, you know you’ve got a lot of fish in the river. You can take bream, mullet, mulloway, trevally, pinkies, conga eels, snapper, flathead, couta, shark.
What are some of your favourite sights from the river?
You have got the Chinese temple, the Heavenly Queen. When it’s all done, they reckon they’ll cater for 1000 people per day. If they had an old Chinese junk, cruising out of Docklands there when they get a jetty, what a wonderful experience. To be in a Chinese vessel and going to a Chinese temple and parkland; it will be beautiful.
What changes would you like to see?
They could enhance the Footscray section of the river by illuminating the bridges. They’ve got the three bridges that are close by; they’re three different styles and, with lighting, you could have a real good effect. They’ve got all the bridges on the Yarra illuminated. I just keep pushing the west.
They’ve got to create something that will stop the traffic and get people spending money in the west. You don’t have to get them all coming and living in here, they’ve just got to come and visit.
