1908 onwards · Crib Point · Western Port

Jack's Beach and the Tanning Pit: Crib Point's Fishing History

On a quiet arc of the Western Port foreshore between Hastings and Crib Point, a low stone mound sits at the back of a narrow sand beach. It doesn't look like much — but it is the only tanning pit known on the Mornington Peninsula, and it holds the story of one of Western Port's fishing families.

The Jack family settles the foreshore

The Jack family purchased this stretch of the Bittern–Crib Point foreshore in 1908, and Jacks Beach Reserve takes its name from them. It was a big family — fourteen children — who first made their living from farming and timber getting. Family members were later among the first workers employed to clear land for the Flinders Naval Base.

The best known of the family were the twin brothers Hector and Leslie Jack, known to everyone locally as Biddy and Blinker. The brothers were renowned for swimming the narrow, freezing channel between Jacks Beach and Sandstone Island (Koolamadoo) in midwinter — just to go rabbiting on the island.

Fishing Western Port

Western Port's vast seagrass meadows made it a rich fishery, and like many locals the Jack brothers derived an income from the bay. They built a timber jetty to moor their fishing boats; the weathered pylons still visible off the beach today are all that remain of it. Fish were abundant — the seagrass beds were a nursery for juvenile fish, crustaceans and molluscs — and remnant meadows can still be seen from the boardwalk north of the beach.

The tanning pit

Fishing nets and lines in the early 1900s were made of cotton, which rots quickly in salt water. To preserve them, fishermen tanned their gear — and the Jack brothers built their own pit for the job around 1918. The pit is built up as a mound faced with random stone and lined internally with cement. Wattle bark was stripped, boiled down, and the nets and ropes soaked in the hot brew.

"This trough was used by the twin brothers Blinker and Biddy Jack to tan their fishing nets and lines which were made of cotton. Tanning was done by boiling wattle bark before soaking the nets in the boiling mixture. The Jack family lived at the entrance to this reserve at the turn of the century." — Plaque at the site

Wattle-bark stripping was probably the first industry ever carried out on the Mornington Peninsula — bark stripped at Western Port was shipped to Van Diemen's Land in the earliest years of settlement. The Jack's Beach pit is rare physical evidence of that trade put to local use: the Mornington Peninsula Shire's Hastings District Heritage Study grades it as of regional significance, it is protected by a heritage overlay (HO324), and it remains the only tanning pit known on the Peninsula.

Visiting Jacks Beach Reserve

Jacks Beach Reserve sits at the end of Woolleys Road, Crib Point, with a car park, toilets and picnic facilities. The tanning pit is a short walk from the car park, and signs of the Jack house site and old plantings can still be seen near the entrance.

The best way to arrive is on foot: the Warringine Park boardwalk runs 3.6 km one way from Salmon Street in Hastings through internationally significant Ramsar coastal wetlands — mangroves, salt marsh and paperbark scrub — to the Jacks Beach car park. Allow around 45 minutes each way. The reserve is also on the Bittern Coastal Walk. More than 110 bird species have been recorded in the park, and the view from the beach takes in French Island, Sandstone Island and the Hastings foreshore. Note that dogs are not permitted in Warringine Park.

Related stories: Woolley's Cool Room, Crib Point · Hastings visitor guide · More Peninsula history