A local resident contacted The Bugle about a story she heard that animal carcasses were dumped routinely off the Blowhole Point near the Showground. The Bugle can confirm that there are several references to this in the archives of the Kiama Independent about the practice, especially complaints based on the smell and that the carcasses attracted sharks. The dumping continued for many decades. 

This led to a number of knock-on effects, including the building of local rock pools as safe swimming areas, as swimming at beaches was generally considered very unsafe due to the large number of sharks.

As recorded at the Pilot’s Cottage Museum and in the archives of the Kiama Independent, the animal carcasses, usually dead farm animals such as cows or horses, used to attract sharks, and particularly a very large tiger shark that got the moniker ‘Big Ben’ and regularly fed at the Blowhole. 

The research indicates that ‘Big Ben’ was a common nickname given to anything of unusual size, as several local sharks and a world record black marlin seemed to have had the nickname. 

His visits were so frequent that as the Harbour was being built and divers, in heavy helmets and rubber suits, were deployed, they decided to regularly feed it. The Kiama Independent recorded the story that the shark would come around and harass the divers working on the Kiama Harbour basin construction. It was also well-known to follow the steamship ‘Illawong’ from Kiama Harbour to Sydney and back again. Kiama Harbour was finished in 1876.

 In 1938 a world record black marlin called Big Ben, was caught off Kiama and put on display at the Brighton Hotel. It was 1226 pounds and 14 foot 9 inches long, and Zane Grey, the famous adventure writer (normally associated with Bermagui as he published ‘An American Angler in Australia’ set in Bermagui in 1936) said it was the biggest he had ever seen. The biggest before this was 900 lbs!

Zane’s secretary Gus Bagnall then caught a world record tiger shark, off Kiama, also nicknamed ‘Big Ben’ (it seems ‘Big Ben’ was used for both the marlin and the shark for some reason), and both were put on display in the Gentleman’s Bar of the Kiama New Brighton Hotel owned by Rupert Beale. Big Ben the tiger shark of Kiama was 1382 lbs and thirteen feet and nine inches long and seven foot nine inches in girth.  

Rupert Beale later exhibited them both around the shows as part of an election campaign. 

The book Kiama Game Fishing History (by Mark Way) states that in 1940 Rupert Beale got a trailer with the tiger shark, ‘Big Ben’ and the Marlin (and a schnapper) and exhibited around the local shows, and also the Brisbane Show and the Royal Easter Show. The trailer as described had sides that folded down to exhibit the glass tanks full of formaldehyde, wheel caps designed to look like shark’s teeth and a big shark head made of fiberglass on the front of the trailer. By all reports it was a big hit, until sadly a few months later it caught fire and was destroyed somewhere at a showground.

Rupert Beale was successfully elected as an Independent Member for Kiama in 1941 in a surprise result. 

Sadly, Rupert died a few months later, and his son Jack Beale was elected in his place, the youngest member at the time at only 25 and member for Kiama both as an independent and as a Liberal in the Askin Government until his retirement in 1973. Jack was a huge advocate of privatised power using dams until his death in 2006. 

Jack had many businesses including Springs Ltd that made springs and Rain Spray Sprinklers Ltd that made rain spray sprinklers. It is remarkable to think that his father’s successful political campaign exhibiting Big Ben the shark led to his son's long and successful career.

A fascinating anecdote is recorded in the Kiama Reporter here from Mrs Portia Robinson (nee Chin), 85 in 1938. She remembers bathing as a girl in Storm Bay, until half past four when the children were ordered out so the men from the nearby Kiama Harbour works could bathe. She recalled a remarkable story of a murdered man whose body was projected out of the Kiama Blowhole.

Mrs Robinson said the Blowhole used “to send the water up to a much greater height than now, the aperture being smaller.”

She also referred to the story of Big Ben the shark being caught off the Blowhole with a pig carcass as bait, after hunting the local coast for years.

Sharks at Kiama Blowhole