What do you think?
Rate this book
Salt Story
In this warm, lively, salty account of living on and by the sea, Drummond writes of fishing and feuds, of life as an apprentice fisherwoman, and of all the fish that got away.
Salt Story pays homage to sea-dogs, fisherwomen, oystermen and storytellers everywhere.
'Too few writers capture the essence of now: the flavour, smell, feel, language. But Sarah Drummond has done it. This is real, but you know this way of life won’t last. Her account of a fishing community on the south coast of Western Australia is a gift. Salt—a real person but not his real name—delivers his philosophy while teaching Sarah the tricks, craft and dodges of making a living from the sea. Salt should be sent to lecture in the corridors of Canberra and corporate board rooms. Vital reading.' Chris Pash, author of The Last Whale
Salt Story pays homage to sea-dogs, fisherwomen, oystermen and storytellers everywhere.
'Too few writers capture the essence of now: the flavour, smell, feel, language. But Sarah Drummond has done it. This is real, but you know this way of life won’t last. Her account of a fishing community on the south coast of Western Australia is a gift. Salt—a real person but not his real name—delivers his philosophy while teaching Sarah the tricks, craft and dodges of making a living from the sea. Salt should be sent to lecture in the corridors of Canberra and corporate board rooms. Vital reading.' Chris Pash, author of The Last Whale
188 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
4 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Drummond
3 books15 followersSarah Drummond lives on the south coast of Western Australia. Salt Story, a memoir of her time spent commercial fishing, is her first book. Sarah's second book, The Sound, is a novel based on the true story of the sealers and Aboriginal women who sailed from Bass Strait to King George Sound in the 1820s. Sarah has had essays and short fiction published in Shadow Plays: an anthology of speculative fiction, Short Stories Australia, indigo journal, the Best Australian Essays 2010, LINQ Journal, Kurungabaa Journal and Overland.
Books available from Fremantle Press
Books available from Fremantle Press
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 22, 2016
Albany. Fishing. Nostalgia - Three of my favourite things. A book that I'll keep forever.
May 1, 2018
Captured the essence of life within a fishing community perfectly. I'm a fisherman's daughter, one of the fisherman in this book actually. And it filled my whole body, my soul with nostalgic pride and love with each chapter (not just the parts about my Dad!).
Sarah really does describe what fisher-men and fisher-women are like! The language, the attitudes and the quirky method of superstitious and secretive communicating!
For someone to read who isn't part of a fishing family from the Great Southern of WA, I reckon they'd enjoy it too.
It's a different perspective, and it's authentic, relate-able and funny! Her writing style is easy to read, flows beautifully with visual artistry.
Sarah really does describe what fisher-men and fisher-women are like! The language, the attitudes and the quirky method of superstitious and secretive communicating!
For someone to read who isn't part of a fishing family from the Great Southern of WA, I reckon they'd enjoy it too.
It's a different perspective, and it's authentic, relate-able and funny! Her writing style is easy to read, flows beautifully with visual artistry.
January 21, 2015
I can taste the salt coming off the page. Sarah Drummond shares her apprenticeship as a fisherwoman with poetic cursing and forthright confessions. The culture of Australian shore fisherpeople is being squeezed from all sides, with the commercial fishery operations, the fish and game, and the residential folks who don't want their beach fishing hindered.
The character nicknames are priceless.
A taste:
"Dodgy wet-weather gear in sideways rain when the nearest hot shower or clothes dryer is fifty kilometers away, is a real bastard.
Then Salt backed into the net and bound up the prop in monofilament. You know the Conchords song 'Business Time'? Yeah, well. It's Whingeing Time. Six in the morning, the sun not yet wakened and my expletives were already spraying the deck. Salt always thinks my tantrums are very funny, so to up the entertainment, he backed into the net a second time after I'd untangled the first one from the propeller." (23)
"Beneath the boat, I could only imagine all the things going on, connected to these happenings by the net and what it would reveal. There was the skin of the water and Salt's boat, floating above this universe. Down there, flathead swam in toothy, carnivorous swathes and the eccentric little spider crab preened her new crown--a single length of seagrass. Turquoise grass whiting fled from the greedy spotted sharks and vampire bat rays. Strange currents ran beneath the calm surface, rolling the net into tight bundles of monofilament and weed. Seagrass undulated in rippling meadows and above all the drama, the dinghy fidgeted against her anchor like a naughty pony." (24)
The character nicknames are priceless.
A taste:
"Dodgy wet-weather gear in sideways rain when the nearest hot shower or clothes dryer is fifty kilometers away, is a real bastard.
Then Salt backed into the net and bound up the prop in monofilament. You know the Conchords song 'Business Time'? Yeah, well. It's Whingeing Time. Six in the morning, the sun not yet wakened and my expletives were already spraying the deck. Salt always thinks my tantrums are very funny, so to up the entertainment, he backed into the net a second time after I'd untangled the first one from the propeller." (23)
"Beneath the boat, I could only imagine all the things going on, connected to these happenings by the net and what it would reveal. There was the skin of the water and Salt's boat, floating above this universe. Down there, flathead swam in toothy, carnivorous swathes and the eccentric little spider crab preened her new crown--a single length of seagrass. Turquoise grass whiting fled from the greedy spotted sharks and vampire bat rays. Strange currents ran beneath the calm surface, rolling the net into tight bundles of monofilament and weed. Seagrass undulated in rippling meadows and above all the drama, the dinghy fidgeted against her anchor like a naughty pony." (24)
June 28, 2020
I'm not a fishing person so why did I read a book about fishing? Having read Sarah Drummond's second book, The Sound, I wanted to read more. Salt Story is beautifully written in an easy conversational style. Each chapter is a short vignette into the daily life of the estuarine and inshore fishing community around the southern tip of Western Australia. Sarah Drummond worked as a deckie for Salt, one of the fishermen and came to love the fisher lifestyle - early mornings, rough weather and baggy, wet clothing. The plain-spoken, eccentric mix of men and women who make up this band of solitary fishers, have, for the most part, been part of this seasonal way of life since they were kids. With names as original as their personalities Salt, Unruly, Ms Mer, Gawain, Grievous, Nails and Turk are all part of a dying breed but they won't go down without a fight. Sarah Drummond has given us a wonderful look at a way of life and an industry that few of us know anything about. I loved reading her beautiful descriptions, laughed at her sense of humour and the affection she has for these men and women of southern WA is tangible. I eagerly await her next book.
November 10, 2015
What a beautifully written book! The small chapters, with their snippets of life as a fisherwoman/deckie down the SW corner of WA, tell of a way of life that has existed for generations and is probably in danger of disappearing. "Salt" has been there and done that in relation to fishing these waterways and the knowledge he has is amazing, the codes he lives by are often hilarious especially viewed by someone who is part of the scene but not really one of them.
Totally real and convincing; just loved it!
Totally real and convincing; just loved it!
October 30, 2021
A unique book that gives a fantastic peak into a different world.
October 23, 2015
I don’t eat much meat, but I’m rather partial to fish, so I was very interested in this book which humanises the small-scale commercial fishing industry that brings the bounty of the sea to those of us who can’t go fishing ourselves.
Sarah Drummond is a ‘deckie’ for ‘Salt’ – not his real name, but he is a real person, and this collection of brief vignettes about their adventures together is all the more interesting because Sarah is a woman in a mostly male industry complete with quaint superstitions about women aboard and so on.
Salt Story doesn’t romanticise the lifestyle: it’s a hard and often dangerous life, and rising at the crack of dawn doesn’t sound like much fun at all. There are also other unpleasantries that I had never heard of:
I sat on a warmed rock at sunset. I sat there as a prospective mutineer, a female Fletcher Christian of the Deep South. I can handle all sorts of things. I can handle live sharks, cobbler, getting scared, getting wet and stingrays.
I can’t handle that damned onshore whore – that incessant summer easterly – or sea lice. I get hysterical when sea lice drop off the fish and bite the webbing between my toes. There is nothing quite so gross. Salt has laughed at my screaming lice dance before but he grew quiet when I said they would crawl up his legs and into his bum and eat him from the inside out. (p. 29)
But Drummond has a dry sense of humour to counter the wet and the cold.
I have to remind Salt often that I am a fairweather fisherwoman but these reminders rarely carry much authority. (About as much authority as a fisherwoman has in the Microsoft spellcheck universe it seems. Word has it that I am not a fisherwoman but a washerwoman). (p.31)
While Drummond likes the ‘Hemingwayesque element’ of her work, ‘that beautiful interplay of art and labour, the cerebral marrying the physical’ she also appreciates the beauty of the environment in which she works...
To see the rest of my review please visit
http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/12/18/sa...
Sarah Drummond is a ‘deckie’ for ‘Salt’ – not his real name, but he is a real person, and this collection of brief vignettes about their adventures together is all the more interesting because Sarah is a woman in a mostly male industry complete with quaint superstitions about women aboard and so on.
Salt Story doesn’t romanticise the lifestyle: it’s a hard and often dangerous life, and rising at the crack of dawn doesn’t sound like much fun at all. There are also other unpleasantries that I had never heard of:
I sat on a warmed rock at sunset. I sat there as a prospective mutineer, a female Fletcher Christian of the Deep South. I can handle all sorts of things. I can handle live sharks, cobbler, getting scared, getting wet and stingrays.
I can’t handle that damned onshore whore – that incessant summer easterly – or sea lice. I get hysterical when sea lice drop off the fish and bite the webbing between my toes. There is nothing quite so gross. Salt has laughed at my screaming lice dance before but he grew quiet when I said they would crawl up his legs and into his bum and eat him from the inside out. (p. 29)
But Drummond has a dry sense of humour to counter the wet and the cold.
I have to remind Salt often that I am a fairweather fisherwoman but these reminders rarely carry much authority. (About as much authority as a fisherwoman has in the Microsoft spellcheck universe it seems. Word has it that I am not a fisherwoman but a washerwoman). (p.31)
While Drummond likes the ‘Hemingwayesque element’ of her work, ‘that beautiful interplay of art and labour, the cerebral marrying the physical’ she also appreciates the beauty of the environment in which she works...
To see the rest of my review please visit
http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/12/18/sa...
October 25, 2014
My View:
Let me share one of my favourite descriptions in this book, for this is a book of poetic language and earthy salty colloquialisms and rustic sepia drawings melded into a beautiful narrative: (p. 25) "Wheat silos, smooth white chrysalids, stood among the praying mantis gantry and chugging conveyor belts, orange lights, steaming mountains of woodchips, ships high on the water out in the Sound. All night, the port worked to clear the backlog. Ships in, ships out. Breathe in, breath out." This is just one example of the visual writing that is Salt Story. I can see so clearly in my mind’s eye this large metal Praying Mantis – the description is just perfect!
This is a beautifully written story filled with personal accounts of small scale commercial fishing in the town of Albany Western Australia, a life and a community you can feel is on the brink of extinction…or is it? Small scale commercial (Estuarine fishing in this case) are largely family run business and as such have a vested interested in keeping fish stocks at a sustainable level for the next generations.
Snapshots of life in this community are told in a real and personal way, Sarah Drummond spent many years working an unofficial apprenticeship with a larger than life local fisherman, “Salt” – this is their story, their history and a glimpse of a world so few of us will experience or happen upon.
And did I mention the illustrations in this book? I fell in love with these sepia reproductions – a piece of history in themselves.
A thoroughly enjoyable read told with passion and integrity. This is creative memoir at its best.
Let me share one of my favourite descriptions in this book, for this is a book of poetic language and earthy salty colloquialisms and rustic sepia drawings melded into a beautiful narrative: (p. 25) "Wheat silos, smooth white chrysalids, stood among the praying mantis gantry and chugging conveyor belts, orange lights, steaming mountains of woodchips, ships high on the water out in the Sound. All night, the port worked to clear the backlog. Ships in, ships out. Breathe in, breath out." This is just one example of the visual writing that is Salt Story. I can see so clearly in my mind’s eye this large metal Praying Mantis – the description is just perfect!
This is a beautifully written story filled with personal accounts of small scale commercial fishing in the town of Albany Western Australia, a life and a community you can feel is on the brink of extinction…or is it? Small scale commercial (Estuarine fishing in this case) are largely family run business and as such have a vested interested in keeping fish stocks at a sustainable level for the next generations.
Snapshots of life in this community are told in a real and personal way, Sarah Drummond spent many years working an unofficial apprenticeship with a larger than life local fisherman, “Salt” – this is their story, their history and a glimpse of a world so few of us will experience or happen upon.
And did I mention the illustrations in this book? I fell in love with these sepia reproductions – a piece of history in themselves.
A thoroughly enjoyable read told with passion and integrity. This is creative memoir at its best.
May 15, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed this book that I won in the goodreads giveaway.
It is made up of 1 - 3 page memories and I found it perfect for taking to my hospital appointments (as you want to be able to put it down and not lose the plot between visits). I was particularly interested in the female perspective of a very male orientated profession at the time, especially as Salt reminded me of my great uncle and his fellow fishermen in my own childhood. I would recommend it to others not as a story to be read but more as an autobiography of part of Sarah's life.
It is made up of 1 - 3 page memories and I found it perfect for taking to my hospital appointments (as you want to be able to put it down and not lose the plot between visits). I was particularly interested in the female perspective of a very male orientated profession at the time, especially as Salt reminded me of my great uncle and his fellow fishermen in my own childhood. I would recommend it to others not as a story to be read but more as an autobiography of part of Sarah's life.
January 6, 2014
Received in a First Reads giveaway, this has not influenced my review in any way.
A book made up of 2 page mini scenes. They are well written but far too brief! A flowing story with continuity would have made it more enjoyable for me, but this is beautiful in its uniqueness; once you get used to the idea of hearing no more about that particular story. You can read one or two in an ad break, waiting for the kettle to boil, or toast to pop.
I loved Sarah's laidback "voice".
A book made up of 2 page mini scenes. They are well written but far too brief! A flowing story with continuity would have made it more enjoyable for me, but this is beautiful in its uniqueness; once you get used to the idea of hearing no more about that particular story. You can read one or two in an ad break, waiting for the kettle to boil, or toast to pop.
I loved Sarah's laidback "voice".
Read
February 7, 2014Final Draft's Sam Groth spoke with Sarah Drummond about Salt Story. You can catch it this Saturday the 8th of February, or on the podcast...
http://www.2ser.com/policies/itemlist...
http://www.2ser.com/policies/itemlist...
November 7, 2013
Please note, I represent the publisher of this book.
November 10, 2013
Fantastic read ? Do yourself a favour and read it too!
December 8, 2014
If your remotely interested in fishing you'll find this book very interesting and worth reading if like me you're not interested in the least then it held my attention for about half the book.
February 5, 2015
great book about a subject we don't always think about. my flatmate read it twice I made do with one reading but really enjoyed the different characters she met and wrote about.
January 2, 2015
Accurate account of a fishing life
February 19, 2015
Mesmerising.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews