A pearl of a farm on Post Office Island

Jane Liddon met us at her jetty on Post Office Island, Houtman Abrolhos wearing her captain’s hat and a bracelet of pearls embedded in silver. She walked us through her front yard... passed a humpback whale skull and a catamaran that looked like it had caught some serious wind.

Coral reef islands are some of the most forlorn and challenging places to live on earth. As a mechanic, fisherwoman, artist, farmer and businesswoman, Jane’s chameleon-like approach to meeting these challenges head-on is fantastic.

Jane Liddon on her jetty at Post Office Island. Photo credit: Howard Gray.

Jane has been a successful crayfisher, one of the only women in Australia to own a licence, but now she has passed her pots on to her sons and begun farming pearls from oysters. Black mooring lines emanate from her corner of the island along which oysters grow from spat to seeded shells over five years. They need to be carefully and patiently tended down the line through an intriguing combination of biology, the hard yakka of getting in the water regularly to clean marine algae off the oyster shells and the delicate focus of specially trained Japanese seeders. With luck, all of this will result in a pearl.

Post Office Island. Photo credit: Karl Monaghan.

Jane and her husband Rick’s house is off the grid with solar panels, wind turbines, water tanks with a dehumidifier for the dry months and a veggie patch planted out in an old tinnie boat. Jane’s dad built their shack on an elevated limestone platform that was built by marine creatures at a time when seas were about 6 m above their current level. That’s a comfortable margin from spring tide floods with rising seas.

Innovation has driven a diversified approach to sustainable living here. Jane showed me her father’s hand-written designs for the world’s first ever jet propulsion boat. By building this propeller-free boat, he propelled the family to crayfishing success by enabling them to work their pots across the tops of the reefs. It also brought them to live in this isolated lagoon-side spot on Post Office Island. Unlike the other fishing villages on islands with deep-water approaches, Jane and her family live behind a reef with a blue snorkelling hole out front. Inspirational.

Jane and Rick’s home on Post Office Island. Photo credit: Sarah Hamylton.