Having just done a three-day hard-hat course, I am of course an expert on the dangers that the early pearl divers faced. But did they know of the dangers! They saw the results of the bends but did they know how to prevent them? Were they so desperate to earn a living that they had to face the unknown ‘terrors of the deep’ – the sharks, huge groupers and giant clams? Garry Kerr’s excellent DVD answers these questions through the candid, fascinating, interviews with some of the men who donned a hard-hat on Thursday Island after the war – after the Japanese, who had dominated the pearling industry prior to the Pacific War, had departed the island. We must be grateful to Garry Kerr for recording the memories of these most courageous divers now well into their twilight years. Of further interest in the documentary movie is several very interesting extracts of a 1970s government film unit documentary called ‘Pearlers of the Coral Seas’, and the famous Chips Rafferty film ‘King of the Coral Sea’, which, incidentally, gave Rod Taylor his start. Duration: 60 minutes

Garry Kerr DVDs - titles 

• Tasmania's Southern Forest
• Abalone Diving Tasmania
• Crayfishing around Tasmania: A fisherman's perspective
  
• The Last Cape Horners
• The Pearl Shell Divers
• Piner's Archive: Stories from Tasmania's wild rivers
• Two men in a punt: In the wake of the Huon Piners
• Trading out of Stanley
• Wooden ships and Stockmen: Bass Strait Islands