Tales of whales take centre stage as push for Bluff whaling museum grows

IT HAS been a lifelong dream of Sodurba chairman, Helga Du Preez and Emil Unger who has a long family history with the now dilapidated whaling station site on the Bluff, to turn it into a museum and tourist attraction.

While that dream is in the process, interested residents of Bluff and surroundings who might have a connection to the whaling station were given the opportunity to join Sodurba, Emil and other historians on a tour to learn about the ins and out of the whaling station, which was one of the largest land-based stations in the world.

The tour which drew quite a crowd on Sunday, 1 July was accompanied by a fresh, cool breeze while the historians rounded off their introductions before separating the audience into three groups.

One group had the honour of having both Unger and the whaling station’s former microbiologist Jeanette Fraude leading the tour as well as their imaginations.

They provided rich details of their time spent at the station. For Fraude it was a scientific playground as well as a love story when she met her husband Peter many years ago.

“I was the only woman working here, specialising in microbiology. I started working on 1 January 1967 but whaling season was only from April to August. It was a very big chemist laboratory with only nine people working,” she said as she stood in what used to be her lab. As a microbiologist they produced items which were consumed by humans and tested them for diseases.

“Meat meal was used for cattle feed and meat extract for meat-flavoured sandwich spreads. By 1967 we started dealing with frozen whale meat. I met my husband Peter here. He just came back from a few months in Antarctica when I first laid eyes on him, walking the corridors at my workplace. We have now been married for 48 years,” she laughed.

Her story was told with such rich detail that it transformed the walls of the faded and broken whaling station. Carrying on with the tour, a picture was painted of the way whales were captured, killed and butchered for different purposes such as oil or meat extracts. “But it was the smell that killed the business. The Bluff was hit badly by the stench of dead whales and the residents had it closed down, notwithstanding the huge international pressure to stop whaling. This business started in 1908 and over 19,000 whales were harvested until 1975,” said Unger.

While the whale processing plant stopped, the buildings still carry a great history which remains hidden. Their collective dream is to open this lost information and experience to the public and to also use it as an opportunity to teach about wildlife and ocean conservation. With a number of lookout points available across the Bluff, this will be a great addition to the whale spotting journey.

“The dream is to eventually take the station back and turn it into a museum. The idea is to let people meet at the ferry point, take people across to the old slipway and let them take a steam train ride to bring them to the old whaling station where they can start the tour,” he added.

READ: Bluff applies for whale heritage site status

While the tour involved a lot of walking, the proximity to the unspoilt beach and nature offers a lot to take in and as such, your thoughts turn to feeling sad for the massacred whales as you the pass the area where their lifeless bodies used to lay, where their fluids would stream underground and the many rooms where they were processed for oil, candles and frozen meat.

These once majestic creatures were unaware of the harpoons which intended to kill them instantly. “Once harpooned, the whaling boat crew would pump air into them to make the bodies float while they towed them back to shore,” added Unger.

PICTURES: The Old Bluff Whaling Station – 1 July tour
Despite what happened to these creatures many years ago, the intended museum will provide an opportunity to honour the whale to the next generation through education.

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