Wasil Gradinaru
Job Description
Flenser, Cooking Jaws
Period
1952 - 1968
Wasil, whose nickname was Basil, was born in Romania, married in Germany and came to Australia in 1949 when a lot of Europeans were re-settling after World War II.
He went to work for Cheynes Beach Whaling Company in 1952. He did a small amount of flensing, but his main job was cooking the whale jaws to soften them, to enable easy removal of the teeth. He also removed some of the jaws from the numerous sharks that were caught at the station. Shark jaws were worth $1200 to $1400. Some of the sharks would take chunks out of the whales that were moored onto buoys ready to pick up. The size of the jaw would be big enough to put a 44 gallon drum inside.
Basil cut the tendons near the jaws of a shark and had his arm in the mouth. The shark jaw closed and Basil had to have 70 stitches in his arm.
Wasil Gradinaru