THIS story is part two of an ongoing series on Ronald Barry ‘Clanka’ McLean. To read Part 1, pick up a copy of last week’s paper or jump online to the News Of The Area website.

‘Clanka’ – A Fearless Character

SOME years later, after purchasing his first trawler ‘Delstar’, built by master shipwright Bill Ryan at Taree, the family fell on hard times and Ron was offered a job to crew a tug boat from Newcastle to Roebourne in Western Australia.

Industrial turmoil, strikes and threats were the order of the day on the waterfront.

It was in this atmosphere that Ron was offered the job to take the tug to WA.

Asking no questions Ron and deckhand Bob McLean (no relative) sailed, or should I say sneaked, out of the Newcastle harbour, in the middle of the night.

“Just enough drama to get Ron excited,” Ron’s wife Adele recalled.

“He had never gone past Seal Rocks and off he went in a tug boat to the other side of the country.

“They were gone for a month.”

As the years passed Ron bought the trawlers ‘Shamrock’ and finally ‘St Patrick’, all built in Taree by Bill Ryan.

Ron left Nelson Bay and headed north, spending twelve months in Evans Head.

He considered the Evans Head bar, the entrance to the river, to be too narrow and shallow so he moved on to Ballina, then Tweed Heads then on to Mooloolaba.

The Queensland coastal village proved comfortable for the family and they stayed, enabling youngest son Patrick to have a settled education.

Ron, accompanied by eldest son Andrew, went further north prawning up as far as Princess Charlotte Bay.

The beginning of the end for Ron occurred in Townsville.

Reading to this point you are possibly wondering why I commenced this story of Ron McLean’s life by stating that he was wilder than Ned Kelly.

Well, it was well known to anyone associated with Ron that there were really two persons, maybe more, in the one body.

One of those persons was Clanka.

There is some confusion about the origin of the nickname but all agree it was related to Ron playing rugby league.

It seems that he was so hard that when he tackled an opposing player there was a resounding ‘clank’ sound.

Others tell me that the nickname relates to one day on the footy field when his pants were torn off while he was running down the field.

Running naked down the sideline some reckon that they heard a definite ‘clank, clank, clank’.

Regardless of where the name came from, there was no doubting that Clanka was one tough nut.

This was evident in just another incident shortly after he bought a motorbike and sidecar in 1954 off the local butcher, Teddy Cohen.

While driving along the old dirt track to Rocky Point he veered into the bush, crashed into a tree and crushed his foot and broke a heap of toes.

Just as his foot was healing he accidentally slammed the door of the Chevy on his crook foot and broke all his toes again, a hell of a mess.

To aid in the recovery, Clanka limped into the Sea Breeze Hotel where he sat up on the bar stool and ordered two stiff scotch whiskeys.

He was closely watched by a well dressed man with a feather in his hat, obviously a city fellow.

He saw the fisherman hobble in and watched him buy the whiskies.

Clanka drank one and then poured the other on his bloodied, broken foot.

The bloke in the suit fainted, fell off the stool and lay on the floor of the pub.

This entire episode was witnessed by Barry Kafer’s uncle, who was holidaying from the Blue Mountains.

He related the yarn so many times over the following years that Barry’s father referred to him as the ‘Blue Mountain Parrot’.

Clanka, even as a young man, was a unique character, a rough diamond with many facets.

Fishermen had the reputation of being wild men but Clanka was the wildest.

Get drunk, fight, do anything.

For a bet, he ate a few live sea worms purchased in the bait shop opposite the Sea Breeze pub, but it must be said that he washed the sand off the worms before dunking them in his schooner of beer.

Then he drank the beer.

As the years went by the stories continued to grow.

It seemed that everyone in the community knew of the larrikin exploits of Clanka McLean.

His very presence made a receptionist at the Nelson Bay RSL Club shiver with fear when she asked the question as he entered the club foyer.

“And your name sir?” she asked.

“Clanka, Clanka McLean,” came the gruff reply.

The woman went white.

It seemed to those with Clanka at the time that the receptionist was about to dive under the desk.

You would have thought she saw a ghost.

His reputation for wild behaviour was well earned and the receptionist wasn’t the only one who shook in their boots at the very mention of his name.

Every fisherman I spoke to had a story to tell about Clanka.

They agreed that he was hard and uncompromising, generous and fearless, a master seaman, very hard worker and outstanding fisherman.

Others told me that he was a very good provider with a heart of gold, kind and even gentle at times.

If you needed help he was always there, however if you got on his wrong side, look out!

You were in real strife.

It was agreed that Clanka was a true Aussie character and a “bloody good bloke”.

“Everyone that Clanka punched deserved it,” reckoned Jimmy Chalkley.

Jimmy had a lot more to tell me.

“Talking about Clanka McLean, I was at the RSL Club one night when it first kicked off.

“I went home and went down to the Bay next morning and here’s all the coppers and everything down the waterfront.
“Anyway, I said to the coppers: ‘What’s going on here?’.”

The policeman replied: “Clanka is towing the ‘FourX’, John Foyster’s boat, into port.”

Foyster owned the Sea Breeze Hotel.

“How come you got Clanka to go and tow him in?” Jimmy asked the gathered police.

“A bit strange I thought considering we were all barred from his pub after I put a bit of a stink on there one night.”

The policeman explained further: “Clanka was drunk at the RSL last night and the word got around that the FourX, a pleasure boat, was broke down off Broughton Island and so he volunteered to go and get the boat and tow it home.”

The copper reckoned the drunk fisherman did a mighty job.

“This is in a 56 foot boat, ‘Shamrock’, and it was blowing a 40 knot westerly.

“The sea conditions were very bad and getting worse,” added the policeman, full of praise for the fisherman’s mighty effort.

It seemed that Clanka was being considered as somewhat of a hero by the police, which was a bit of a change.

So what happened was that Clanka had got aboard his boat, drunk, and steamed to Broughton in a foul sea.

The Foyster boat was moored up in Esmeralda Cove out of the weather.

Clanka had a big heavy rope down the back for towing, so he threw them this coil of silver rope which they looped over the bow.

Then he threw all the rope overboard and looped the other end on the back bollard of his boat and steamed out of Esmeralda and didn’t look back.

When he got ashore, back in Nelson Bay many hours later, he told his friend he had “squared up with Foyster for booting us out of the pub”.

“How did you square up?” Jimmy quizzed.

“I didn’t turn right till I got to 80 fathoms!” Clanka chuckled.

So instead of heading out of Esmeralda and steaming directly home, Clanka headed straight out to sea in the howling wind and rolling swell.

You can only imagine what it was like out there.

Everyone was out looking for him because the drunk fisherman left the port at midnight and he was long overdue.

The reason for being so late, only known to Clanka, was that he had taken the long way home.

The very long way home.

“Anyway Foyster ended up throwing keys to the pub, this was at 9 o’clock in the morning,” Jimmy said.

“Get your mates out of the RSL Club and the manager will let you in the saloon bar of the pub, it’s yours till 3 o’clock.
“I won’t let anyone else in.”

The publican certainly was glad to get his feet on dry land.

At this stage of the story I couldn’t go any further until I had asked Jim why he was barred from the pub in the first place for putting on a “stink”.

I was itching to find out more.

We will get back to Clanka later.

By John ‘Stinker’ CLARKE