Murray Snowdon reminiscences about growing up in Redcliffs, a seaside suburb adjacent to the estuary, Murray was born in 1926, this story about Joe Smith, would have occurred sometime in the late 1930’s
He made himself a diving helmet out of kerosene tin. With a top end out of it and a couple of a curved pieces cut out to fit over his shoulder and padded. Made a window in the front, put a piece of glass in it, and sealed it up somehow. And put an inlet in the top for air, hooked up a car pump with an extended tube on to this inlet in the top and he use to go down with somebody else in the boat, pumping, with a car pump, you know, a conventional car pump, pumping air. And Joe would walk around on the bottom and there would be a string of bubbles coming up and so on, this was all great fun, everybody enjoyed the fun. But I don’t remember anybody volunteering to put the thing on and do it themselves. And somebody over at Lyttelton, some official over at Lyttelton, something to do with the Harbour Board, they lost something in the bottom of the harbour, the inner harbour I mean not the outer harbour so they came and saw Joe. This boy, what was he fourteen or fifteen at this stage I suppose and they got Joe and his diving suit and his helmet and took him over to Lyttelton. Put him in the boat and he found what they were looking for. He was an absolute character was Joe he was always doing something he shouldn’t be doing.
Listen to an excerpt;
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:08 — 1.5MB)
