[Hardie, Jennie, 1981, Nor'-Westers of the Pilbara Breed, Shire of Port Hedland, Western Australia]
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During this time many of the luggers were deliberately submerged to rid them of cockroaches. As the boats sat on the muddy mangrove-spiked harbour floor, unplugged, the incoming tide would gradually fill the bilges and as the water rose so, too. did the huge beetling cockroaches that scurried out from cracks and corners seeking a point above waterline. ‘The mast soon became a jostling mass of insects, all seeking refuge’, Constable Napier wrote. ‘but alas, disaster was to overtake them in the form of the lugger crews who rowed round the mast laughing and disposing of them by swatting them into the water. The town was also infested with cockroaches. They were a tough bunch,’ he wrote. ‘They would tackle anything from raw potato to the greasy lining of a hat’.
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