"We used to go there for our annual holiday, the family would pack up and off we'd go in the old Dodge car. I can clearly remember getting to the river crossing, the Pallinup river crossing at Marra, and there was a gentle sloping bank on one side and a very steep bank on the other side and I'd flatly refuse to ride in the car up the steep side. Dad had to stop, which I'm sure made it very difficult for him to get up the steep bank, while I walked up and then I would get back on board and off we'd head for Pallinup. I often wondered how on earth we ever got there because the tracks were just absolute sand tracks. I think perhaps the narrow tyres on the car helped us get through. But we had wonderful times there, we used to pitch our tents and camp by the river, catch fish, enjoy life.

I clearly remember the very shady paperbark trees. They were always lovely to pitch a tent in so that when the afternoon sun come over, especially as it was the middle of January and usually fairly hot, it was lovely to have the shade on your tent in the afternoon. We caught lots of fish and I'm sure that was probably our staple diet while we were there, being able to go and catch the fish.

We also used to go fishing in the Pallinup River from Marra down, not necessarily in the estuary but in the actual river. We used to go down to the Marra Homestead then follow the farm tracks down through the paddocks. We used to stop at various places down the river and fish. In those days there weren't freezers and what have you to keep the fish so we used to go fishing and on the way home you'd drop fish off to all the people on the road home and then when they went fishing they'd do likewise. The fish was always shared, but in a good day you could catch a sugar bag full of fish no problem."
Amelia Moir

"We had our favourite rocks that we reckoned you could always catch fish off all along the river from where it started up in the Marra end. That was about two miles inside our paddock? You could fish there and right down the river and we were about half way down, that Brian said, was Kowalds Point or something, because there was and old fisherman, he used to come down there called Ryan Kowald, tough old guy. You know honest and good, decent old fella. He used to come down quite often with a Mr Thorman, who was the parish priest, Anglican priest. These two came and lived at Marra with us and at the end of the day Mr Thorman would say "Oh, Ryan's a tough old thing but nobody else would come with him but me". And Ryan would say "You know, he's a tough old thing but nobody else would come with him except me."
Betty Sewell

"That side of the centre of the bar but not that close, it was back towards the centre of the bar length. Further along there was a salmon fisherman's camp and they had nothing to do with the Pallinup, they used to come in from the country and go to their locality. We were standing there, we'd come up from Bremer to have a look at this, and we spotted a little rowing boat out in the water. The sea was opposing the river and of course that was creating quite a choppy surface and all of a sudden this boat does a slow roll, in fact it was a quick roll. The occupants of the boat disappeared, but fortunately one came up quick enough to grab a bit of the boat and he hung on. It was just as well because he couldn't swim and the other person was Bill Hassell's eldest boy. All the gear from the boat came ashore and young Hassell had the good sense to just keep afloat and he came ashore. But the other fella was left out there where the two opposing forces were meeting and he was more or less stationery, being thrown up and down but still hanging on for dear life and then another boat came from the salmon camp and rescued him. But boy he a lucky man. Of course they came in and they picked up young Hassell and took him away, he was helping at the camp. I would think that other gentleman, who I knew quite well, would volunteer to be cook full-time, no more salmon fishing."
Brian Moir

"Patty's brother had a bus camp down there about three years ago and he said "why don't you come down for a day, we might get a few fish." This time instead of being camped on the south side where we used to camp, you can't get in there with a bus or anything unless it's a light vehicle or big tyres or something like that, four-wheel-drive or whatever. So we came in the gravel way, which is Miller's Point on the north side. We went in there and had a great day there. Went out with a chappy on a boat. There again the nets come into it, I'm not sure how much but he had a lot of net out and he picked up 900 kilos of mullet in an hour. A lot of fish, they weren't small fish they were big mullet. But in a way it was easy but in another way it wasn't. I knew that when you were chasing mullet you had to stir them up if you could, because mullet are supposed to be a surface fish, although they do go down near the sand sometimes if its shallow water looking for food. What we did, when we set the net and tied the ends off, it only took us about 20 minutes to set the net. I don't know offhand how much it was but we circled that net with this boat flat strap all the time up and down the other side of it and by doing it it excited the mullet and they didn't know where they were going and bang they were all netted in the net. So I was lucky enough, we brought three or four home that night. Paddy's brother was out on a boat earlier and he'd caught a few bream and we were cleaning bream and mullet and had a barbecue dinner, it was really nice."
Handley (Bomber) Page